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wackget

2,887 karma · joined January 18, 2020

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wackget··on Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica
I know submissions are not meant to contain modifications to article titles, but would it be so bad to have added "at 6mph" and/or "minor injuries" to the title?
wackget··on Android’s desktop interface leaks
For desktop use? Windows XP. It's got the right balance of aesthetics and practicality. Windows ME also works, but is more utilitarian. Anything after 7 is just absolute garbage.
wackget··on UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M
I feel like the true scandal beneath all of these big government contracts is not necessarily the money spent, but actually how poor the services received are.

I have worked with many "big agency" developers and can tell you categorically that they are more often than not absolutely terrible at their jobs.

wackget··on Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
If we're talking about mass adoption of Linux then there really has to be no concept of even "picking a camp". The vast majority of users - even techy people - will not understand what a window manager is, never mind be capable of choosing one.

Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once.

wackget··on Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)
Well, don't leave us hanging. What did they say?
wackget··on Fix your robots.txt or your site disappears from Google
A diamond product expert is a poor sap who freely gave up their time to act as an unpaid stand-in customer support for the richest company on earth.
wackget··on Fix your robots.txt or your site disappears from Google
> The top Stack Overflow answer on robots.txt has a discussion about Allow: / not being valid according to the spec. The only date for the comments is "Over a year ago" but given that the question is from 2010 the comments are probably from around that time.

Firstly, I detest that stupid "feature" of showing only relative dates. It makes screenshots impossible to date, and it's frankly useless for humans as proven by OP's article.

Secondly, you can hover over the relative date string to see the actual date. But don't let that stop you from hating it.

wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
Looks like an awesome project; thanks for sharing it.

On my next attempt at a Linux desktop I'll most certainly try it.

I'll also create a feature request for resizing/stacking of rows.

wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
It's not the only thing, although it is a big one. Honestly Windows just feels better to me and works the way I want it to. It might help that I've always used enterprise versions so I've never had to deal with the awful bloatware. The few things I do want to disable are pretty painless to remove through the group policy editor or one of many freeware GUI tweaker programs.
wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
~~Sorry, I can't view the image due to annoying Imgur restrictions (and they restrict proxies/VPNs too).~~

Edit: I was able to find a proxy which works and I can see the image.

Your layout is kind of similar but not really - the Windows taskbar can be configured to work in both rows and columns, or a combination of the two.

So you can have a layout like my original screenshot above, or:

* in columns like this: https://i.ibb.co/Y4jJN6jh/image.png

* a mixture of columns and rows like this: https://i.ibb.co/5WsVmLgb/image.png

* at the top or either side of the screen like this: https://i.ibb.co/9mGmjnxs/image.png

* and in any position it can be resized: https://i.ibb.co/HLmh89qF/image.png

Shame they ditched all this in Windows 11 though.

wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
It's not. You can add quick launch icons and drive shortcuts natively (right click > Toolbars > New Toolbar). I only use Taskbar Tweaker to replace the Windows Aero-style tooltip with the standard jump list right click menu.

The media taskbar player can be added natively from older versions of iTunes, Windows Media Player, or others.

wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
> Everything one sees on Windows can be stripped out and reverted to Windows 2000 mode. That grey boxy UI is literally still there.

Can the horrendous W11 taskbar be reverted to the classic taskbar, with full support for changing its size and screen position etc?

Can classic Explorer, without any OneDrive/Copilot nonsense, be restored?

Can the new "Settings" (*excuse me while I vomit) layouts be junked in favour of the Control Panel, along with all the associated modals such as the WiFi selection sidebar etc.?

wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
I'll consider switching to Linux when the GUI becomes as configurable as Windows 10 or earlier.

For example, this is my taskbar layout: https://i.ibb.co/1GqKH27L/taskbar-layout.png

To my knowledge, it's not possible to achieve anything like this layout on Windows 11, Linux or Mac. I did try it in various Linux distros a few times but frankly got sick of navigating the maze of window managers et cetera. I think something like XFCE came close to providing a Windows-like taskbar but it was still far, far behind what Windows NT can offer.

wackget··on Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
My experience of Linux (and Mac OS) has been the opposite; they are extremely painful to make usable.

Yes, I have to disable a lot of stuff to get Windows the way I like it. But that's still exponentially easier than having to add, install, or perhaps even buy a lot of stuff to maybe get Linux/Mac to behave kind of how I want it to.

wackget··on Impeccable Style
The "Before" examples look infinitely better than the "After" examples. Tells you all you need to know. Wouldn't be at all surprised if this whole thing was a ridiculous joke or a satirical commentary on pretentious design.
wackget··on Why Ontario Digital Service couldn't procure '98% safe' LLMs (15M Canadians)
I don't want to trivialise someone's hard work but isn't this really just applying to LLMs what every responsible developer/sysadmin already knows: granular permissions, thoughtfully delegated?

You wouldn't give every user write access to a database in any system. I'm not sure why LLMs are a special case. Is it because people have been "trusting" the LLMs to self-enforce via prompt rules instead of actually setting up granular permissions for the LLM agent process? If so, that's a user training issue and I'm not sure it needs an LLM-specific article.

Secondly, FTA:

> You can stop a database delete with tool filtering, but how do you stop an AI from giving bad advice in text? By using a pattern I call “reifying speech acts into tools.” > The Rule: “You may discuss symptoms, but you are forbidden from issuing a diagnosis in text. You MUST use the provide_diagnosis tool.” > The Interlock: > If User = Doctor: The tool exists. Diagnosis is possible. > If User = Patient: The tool is physically removed. > When the tool is gone, the model cannot “hallucinate” a diagnosis because it lacks the “form” to reason and write it on.

How is this any different from what I described above as trusting LLMs to self-enforce? You're not physically removing anything because the LLM can still respond with text. You're just trusting the LLM to obey what you've written. I know the next paragraph admits this, but I don't understand why it's presented like a new idea when it's not.

wackget··on Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11
Random checks?
wackget··on Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11
When anything is described as "opinionated" I just read it as "wilfully inflexible".
wackget··on State of the Fin 2026-01-06
Does anyone else not really "get" these media managers? Personally I still find it much easier to grab media from a torrent and watch it on a computer using VLC. It requires zero setup.

I do have the benefit of a PC connected to my living room TV, but even if I didn't, most TVs these days can natively play media from a network share.

wackget··on Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
Don't blame the users. Unless Google have hidden a copy of Crysis inside the Gmail app there's no hidden functionality which should come even close to requiring hundreds of megabytes.
wackget··on Web development is fun again
> On the frontend, you have build pipelines, bundlers, CSS frameworks with their own toolchains, progressive web apps, Core Web Vitals, SEO, layout shifts, srcset/responsive images… I remember when the biggest challenge was IE6 compatibility.

You only have those things if you choose to use them.

I've been building websites for 25 years. I use the same core technologies today that I did when I started. Sure, I make use of modern improvements to the languages themselves, but I have never permanently adopted any of the "hot new trends" and feel I am better - or at least saner - for it.

No, your marketing or e-commerce website almost certainly doesn't need a JS bundling toolchain. It almost certainly doesn't need a CSS preprocessor or even a CSS boilerplate/framework. It almost certainly doesn't need an enterprise-class PHP framework; or a dependency manager; or a CI/CD pipeline.

wackget··on MongoDB Server Security Update, December 2025
We used MongoDB's cloud offering (Atlas) and have had nothing but problems with it. Like, serious problems - "production down for multiple days" problems caused entirely by MongoDB messing up SSL certificates on their end. We were utterly powerless to do anything and their support was dreadful. I cannot take their products seriously now.
wackget··on GOG is getting acquired by its original co-founder
Link without Google tracking parameter (`si`): https://youtu.be/cUrJVdF2me0
wackget··on CSS Grid Lanes
I wish they'd release CSS Gap Decorations: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/gap-decorations

I'm tired of having to use stupid hacks to get nice-looking borders between flex/grid items.

wackget··on Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
I feel like all these articles are writing about the wrong thing. Yeah, it sucks that the guy's account got banned, and yeah, maybe we can't trust gift cards.

But the truly troublesome issue is how an entire ecosystem of (very expensive) hardware is allowed to be tied to an identity controlled by a giant black box of a corporation.

What I mean is: you can spend thousands and thousands on devices and configure them to be almost invaluable to your everyday life, but you are ultimately completely beholden to Apple. You require their ongoing permission to continue using those devices. You are completely at their mercy.

And sure, you can argue that people willingly sign up for that kind of agreement when they make the decision to purchase Apple/Google products but that's also missing the point. Phones are now essential utilities. Accessing vital services sometimes requires an iOS or Android device.

Permitting giant, uncontactable, merciless tech corporations to control the digital lives of virtually everyone on the planet is absolute insanity.

The scenario described in the OP's article should simply never be allowed to happen.

wackget··on Please just try HTMX
This incredibly simple text-based website doesn't work without enabling JavaScript and allowing XHR in uMatrix.

Why not "just use HTML"?

wackget··on Devs say Apple still flouting EU's Digital Markets Act six months on
You forgot to mention Google's upcoming developer verification push, which will prevent users installing apps - even from third-party sources - if the developers have not verified their identity with Google:

https://developer.android.com/developer-verification

wackget··on Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
> "a modern AI browser"

No thanks. Absolutely not.

wackget··on $50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres
If anyone from Planetscale is reading this, please know I hate what you did to your website. I previously had it bookmarked as an example of excellent, usable website design. About a year ago it turned into a plaintext nightmare. The first time I saw the new design I genuinely thought that a CSS file had failed to load in my browser. It's awful.

*Edit:* It also fails to load other pages if you have JavaScript or XHR disabled.

wackget··on UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
I'm not at all a fan of mass surveillance, but is it possible - just possible - that your statement might contain just a smidge of hyperbole?
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