I still have some nostalgia for Windows Phone. I genuinely liked the platform - even bought an Omnia 7 back in the day, and later a Lumia 1020 (that camera was so good).
I still think the tile based UI was underrated. Live Tiles felt like a smart idea that never quite got the support it needed. It's one of those "what could have been" stories in tech.
I don’t see why you wouldn’t book a flight using an AI assistant. No one’s saying it should do it completely unsupervised (maybe that’ll come much later), but having something that can research the best routes based on my criteria and show me several options — with a single click to purchase the one I find most convenient — is something I’d love.
It could even work against the dynamic pricing algorithms airlines use to maximize revenue: if I have a tireless assistant exploring every possible combination to find the cheapest ticket, it’ll probably do a much better job than I ever could.
There's probably little danger to the savvy user who understands how manipulative technology like this can be.
The problems come when vulnerable users are targeted using dark patterns. How AI dark patterns will evolve is very uncertain [1] however I suspect they will be extremely subtle and very effective.
What's the worst that can happen if someone vulnerable is persuaded to buy a flight by an AI. I don't know, maybe depression and bad credit after the chatbot's promises weren't met. If they're persuaded to buy a weapon, that's a different matter.
At least current advertising is somewhat public, although that's increasingly less true as ads get more targeted.
This is new territory where ads will be so extremely private it will be only known by the user (maybe they won't even notice) and someone reading the subpoenaed chat logs after a user does something terrible. Those chat logs will likely be inconclusive anyway.
I suppose you just have to trust that it's incentivized to find you the best route and not only offer you 3 options which it says are the best, but are actually paid promotions.
It depends too on what you value. I’d be more than happy to pay a premium if it meant the time for me looking for a flight and having a seat booked is drastically reduced.
We used to get that through the services of a travel agency. Maybe we will soon have that luxury again?
I would try using AI to book flights - then double check if I can't get a better offer. Do this a couple of times and when I see AI is as good or even better at getting me flights, then sure, why not use it.
Extrapolating from my experience testing it for coding tasks the result is not reliable even if it was right a couple of times. A risk I'm not willing to take. And I can't say that AI powered chat assistants on web pages have been much help either.
You can even automate this kind of testing in the AI model. I think the Google ADK has a built-in system for tests you use to confirm the reply quality.
pdoc is my go-to documentation tool for small Python projects.
However, when they start to grow, MkDocs and the Material for MkDocs theme make the most sense — they’re easy to install and deploy, and they offer a ton of features for writing engaging documentation.
Love MkDocs* even for non-Python. But, wasn’t aware it could auto-generate from code comments like pdoc? I’d assume one would use pdoc for the API section of a hot mkdocs layout.
I’ve been running Immich for about two years on Oracle’s free tier (200 GB disk / ARM VM), and it works great. Since I don’t fully trust Oracle for long-term storage, I’ve configured a daily backup to Backblaze.
My only minor complaint is that new releases are super frequent and rarely add anything meaningful.
Serious question: why are people siding with Imgur here, instead of blaming the company that chose to ignore the laws of the country it operates in?
Imgur's business model is ad sales and tracking users - that inherently requires collecting and protecting data, including vulnerable groups like children. Even if the UK rules are imperfect or possibly overbroad (I haven't read them), if a company choose to operate where a law applies, it's on the company to follow it or to challenge it through the courts, not to blame the regulator after the fact.
Thanks to OSA, service providers have to collect even more data from users, including face scans and IDs. They usually outsource that process to third party companies, which obviously are registered in Cyprus or another shady country. We can expect a massive leak in a near future, and no one will be prosecuted, though you will receive a letter from the government saying: "We are really sorry for the leak of your data, we weren't able to get in touch with the data processing company, so we kindly ask you to revoke your passport and apply for a new one. Stay vigilant as someone might use your identity for illegal purposes".
> including vulnerable groups like children
The "vulnerable group" is proficient at using VPNs. Ironically, the new law affects older generations the most.
That's a fair point, but you have to take into consideration the relevant laws and countries. You also need to take into consideration what it means to "operate" in a country.
>> Serious question: why are people siding with Imgur here, instead of blaming the company that chose to ignore the laws of the country it operates in?
Because if we've learnt anything from the debate around the Online Safety Act, it's that the majority of people are so unbelievably addicted to porn they feel like it's a human rights violation to put up barriers to their access to it. While there are obvious privacy arguments against sharing your ID to access these sites the alternative is just not viewing porn. It's remarkable how unfathomable that idea is to entire generations of people.
Yes. There are legitimate reasons to dislike the law, its implementation, or its impact on privacy. But 99% of people dislike it simply because they are heavily addicted to porn. The fact there have been much more privacy invasive laws introduced in the UK over the last decade which face little widespread outrage is the tell.
I think it's rather that OSA actually visibly affects people in their day-to-day lives whereas other laws don't. I constantly hit age verification pages on Reddit and Twitter and I don't use either for porn. I'm fundamentally against giving Reddit or Twitter or a 3rd party processor my ID just to view content someone somewhere deemed potentially harmful to minors. At least Twitter is done on a post-by-post basis; on Reddit entire subreddits are gated behind age verification.
That's not the point I was trying to make. You believe that almost all people who have issue with the law do so because of porn addiction. You haven't shown any data, it's just your belief, from which you're informing and repeating your world view as fact.
Thanks, we marked this one as a duplicate, because a followup post about a post that has already had a significant discussion here can't sustain a new discussion.
I’m really impressed by the quality of this post, as others have mentioned. It’s very well written, and the clarity of the drawings adds a lot to the overall explanation.
It perfectly illustrates the old saying: a picture is worth a thousand words.
I had never heard of this protocol before (even though I’ve been using Bluesky since the Twitter/X takeover), but after reading this, I feel even more confident that the migration was the right call.
I think the _copy-and-patch_ approach [0] is probably the best compromise here.
You get many of the guarantees of compiled code (strong correctness, reduced mismatch between interpreter vs JIT semantics, etc.), while still being very close to native performance.
In fact, Python is already moving in that direction: the new bytecode-based copy-and-patch JIT in Python 3.13 shows correct results even before heavy performance tuning.
So to me this seems like a very promising road: I wonder how practical this is if the base language is not C/C++ but Rust (or any kind of memory safe language).
While US airlines are lobbying to roll back passenger protections and add fees, the EU is moving the opposite way - now pushing rules to standardize free carry-on and checked baggage sizes across all airlines[0]
I still think the tile based UI was underrated. Live Tiles felt like a smart idea that never quite got the support it needed. It's one of those "what could have been" stories in tech.
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