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AI sure killed the motto KISS. Copilot for notepad is literally using a nuclear reactor to light a single bulb.
Figuratively
That too.
- Literally has meant figuratively since it first appeared as a word in the 1700s and this usage is listed in every major dictionary
- https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/energy/three-mile-island-microsoft-ai/index.html
Literal is the exact opposite of figurative…
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/figurative
I wonder, why is ‘literally’ so special?
Someone steps out into unexpectedly cold weather and says, “It’s freezing out here.” But it’s not below freezing.
Someone that hasn’t eaten all day takes a bite and says, “I was starving, this is the best burger I’ve ever tasted!” They weren’t really starving, and they probably didn’t just rank every burger they’ve eaten.
We exaggerate and/or use words incorrectly for the effect so often, people are constantly using words “incorrectly” but then they say, “I’m literally dead right now.” and dictionaries change their definitions and people point out semantics. It’s like literally is figuratively magic.
It’s almost like language is radically democratic and words only mean what we largely agree they mean, with fluctuating cases based on particular contexts.
“Freezing” is an exaggeration of “cold”, just like “starving” is an exaggeration of “hungry”. It’s “a lot of X”.
“Literally” is not an exaggeration, it’s the opposite of “figuratively”. It’s “-X”.
Those are two entirely different things. But of course inflammable means flammable.
And “terrific” and “awesome” are exaggerations of “scary”.
Yes. Am I meant to add anything here?
Yeah, somehow “literally” is the only word in a figure of speech that cannot be part of the figure at all! They are so smart for pointing that out
I think “literally” should be an exception because it’s the only word to clarify when we’re not speaking figuratively. It’s like making your safe word “fuck me harder”.
Sanction is the exact opposite of sanction, but you never see people moan about that for some reason
Table can mean “to discuss a topic at a meeting” (British English) or “to postpone discussion of a topic” (American English). Canadian English uses both meanings of the word
Canada . . . seriously? I can’t sanction that type of behaviour.
That’s the problem with being influenced by both British and American English. We have both senses in New Zealand English too, although I think the US one is slowly winning out and the British one might one day fall out of use.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/literally
That’s one of it’s senses, yes, but how many of those definitions are the opposite of figurative?
Literally literally means figuratively.
The use of “literally” is part of the figure of speech you’re pedantically referring to. Saying “figuratively” would be redundant, as everyone knows Copilot is not a nuclear reactor, and also declaring that you are using a figure of speech “weakens” it (like /s for sarcasm). By saying “literally” they are saying “wow, this fits so well that this isn’t even a metaphor anymore”.
If you want to correct everyone for saying literally instead of figuratively, correct every teenager saying “I’m actually dying rn 😂” with “ackshually you’re not ACTUALLY dying, as I can see you are still alive typing tips fedora”Oh. I thought “literally” was just referring to the fact that many of those data centers pull from nuclear grids.
I do apologize for using exaggerated words to beautify my sentences, tostiman, sir.
Gotta scoop all the data from everywhere on your machine, even the temporary notes you don’t save.
They’re not temporary any more, they keep coming back, I keep forgetting and then my PC reboots and I need to make a quick note and have to wait for 50 zombie text files to rise from the dead.
The new moto is “keep giving me money stupid”
How wasting billions on AI accomplishes that goal, I don’t know but I’m sticking with FOSS apps and platforms just to be safe
The first nuclear reactor was used to light a single bulb. Presumably it was either an incredibly inefficient bulb or an incredibly inefficient reactor.
Anyway this is all just an extension of everything having an app.
Using an actual nuclear reactor to light a single bulb is literally using a- I’m kidding. I leave lemmy for a couple hours, come back and see a total armageddon, all because there are picky people about the use of words.
This is a pretty random Notepad story, but: in 1999 I was doing web development for Internet Explorer 6 (yes, I know) using Classic ASP and Visual Basic (5 or 6? I can’t be bothered to look shit like that up). Probably my most important debugging tool was the “View Source” menu option in IE6, which would bring up the raw HTML of whatever page I was working on in Notepad. One day the “View Source” option just stopped working, completely. Clicking that menu wouldn’t do anything at all; I tried everything I could think of but just couldn’t fix the problem. For six months I was basically coding blind - I had no way of directly seeing the HTML my code was producing.
Somehow I managed to still get my work done. Then one day I stumbled across an obscure forum post that said “View Source” in IE6 would not work if you had a shortcut to Notepad on your Desktop. I of course had a shortcut to Notepad on my Desktop since I kept everything on my desktop (yes, I know). I renamed my shortcut to “NotepadX” and suddenly “View Source” in IE6 started working again. Possibly the happiest day of my programming life. I played around with it and found that it didn’t have to actually be a shortcut to Notepad - it could be a shortcut to any program or file, but if it happened to be named “Notepad” it would block View Source from working.
I would give anything to find out where this particular bug came from. It’s really bothered the shit out of me for the past 26 years. I don’t see how it could ever happen accidentally, so I have to assume that some MS programmer somewhere really hated people with shortcuts to commonly-used programs on their Desktop and decided to punish them.
I love that story. Thanks for sharing. What a crazy bug. Maybe IE6 was integrating with windows in some weird way? I almost want to fire up a VM and see if I can replicate it. Think you can remember which version of windows it was?
IE was literally embedded into the OS. There’s no surprise there were bugs like that.
Wow! Thank you for sharing; what an weird bug! Perhaps some ancient code to make use of notepad for view source if available, then the available function got changed, for other reasons, to if on desktop, then a different version of notepad broke the chain of borked code?
Well, IE6 did open Notepad to show source by default, but it makes no sense why a shortcut to Notepad just existing on the Desktop would prevent that. Especially when it didn’t even have to be a real shortcut to Notepad.
Probably tried to execute Notepad.lnk, because Desktop came before /system in the path, and however they were calling it did not resolve the link before executing - and that meant a hang, silent error, or no op
i installed arch on my laptop almost 10 years ago
I have to fix something maybe once a year and I only update once a week, if i remember
reboot maybe one time in a month
the myth that you need to fix Linux constantly needs to die
I switched from W10 to Fedora KDE a little over a month ago, and the amount of troubleshooting I had to go through during this time is unlike anything I’ve ever faced with Windows. I think I have a handle on things now, but the switch to Linux as a casual user was not as seamless as I’d been told over and over.
Others experience may be different of course, but in my experience Linux is not as easy to use as Windows.
Still happy with my choice to not swap back to Windows though.
I have the exact opposite experience: I recently installed Fedora (stock, so Gnome) and had 0 issues. It was easier to install that Windows. The sidenote is that I have a Framework laptop, so my hardware is fully supported. And I was a Linux user before, so nothing looks alien to me. I didn’t need the terminal to get everything working, including wireless printing.
I don’t know what you’re talking about because when I tried Linux it was a nightmare. The only thing that worked properly ironically was the printer. It’s straight up would not play sound, if I plugged in headphones it would play sound but it would not play sound through the speakers. There were lots of people telling me I needed to install new sound drivers, or run arbitrary commands. None of them fixed it.
It ended up being a problem with the USB driver. That’s ridiculous, I shouldn’t have to mess around with a driver for an internal component.
Sounds like my experience from a while ago.
Yeah, wondering myself if this guys experience was also from a long time ago or maybe just an obscure device or something.
What distro?
With the apparent rise of immutable spins, it might get to be even less since user space is separate the OS space. I’m trying Aurora on my laptop to see if there is any advantage to running an immutable spin over the standard distros. I’m kind of torn about it right now, there are some advantages to both and some downsides to both.
Same experience here. Despite rolling release and everything.
What I will offer from my limited experience is that the Mint install I have will begin to topple over after a few weeks if I don’t run updates, whereas my Mac will soldier on without missing a beat if I miss several months of updates.
For folks who cannot do this due to it being a work-controlled machine or otherwise, you can use notepad++. (Obviously id rather this be a tipping point to ditch all the junk at once, but sometimes that isnt feasible)
That said, i find i still need a throwaway notepad for fast trashy notes. In that case ive just uninstalled the new notepad and re-downloaded the legacy notepad then re-aimed “notepad.exe” to the legacy one.
There are a few guides out there, just search your standard “how to get legacy notepad”
No need to download anything really.
- Go to System -> Optional features and verify that Notepad is listed and if it isn’t add it.
- Go to Apps -> Advanced settings for apps -> App executions aliases and disable Notepad.
- Enjoy the classic notepad again.
Ah you are indeed correct. I’m probably thinking of classic paint, not notepad.
Either way, i have the downloader for ye old notepad and paint tucked away on and off my machine for future sake when my company middle management decides they want to try to push the new AI tools down our throats for productivity again.
For folks who cannot do this due to it being a work-controlled machine or otherwise, you can use notepad++
That is assuming their work-controlled machine already has Notepad++ installed, right?
It depends on how locked down it is. There is a portable version that doesn’t require install, but also you might get in trouble for running exes from the web.
Nope!
Amusingly there is a very large overlap in the companies that want to try to force ai tech crap onto their workers, but dont limit admin controls for users.
But to be more specific, what i meant by work-controlled is that you cant just install linux on a work machine or uninstall office products for alternatives due to company licensing.
Nothing preventing you from just not using that crap though of course but at that point you know your own company limits than i would so god speed!
Last thing you’d probably want to do is be forced into sitting in a class with Mr.MiddleManager / Mr.NepotismHire to go over why these AI products are actually good for you and they arent happy you circumvented that.
At work I have to use Windows, Notepad++ is my safe place. It is fast, there’s plugins for years, and it handles (with some wait time) 100 000 line long documents.
Or, you can just turn Copilot off from the settings panel.
I used notepad precisely because it lacks features beyond writing text, this is such an anti feature
SublimeText might be a good next option. :)
Isn’t notepad++ better?
My entire work brain is in there. Hundreds of tabs none of them were ever saved. I was recently looking for something and found notes I took 2 years ago. I love it but I also get why a lot of people don’t.
Not if you don’t use windows, or if you want a more modern looking and less busy interface, or integration with what I consider the best git GUI. I used to use N++ long ago, but after trying ST I realized it just feels clunky.
Personal preference. :) I use it bare bones but like having the option to extend when needed.
Yeah I have that as well, and I’m surprised how fast and light weight it feels compared to something like VS code
I think in general you can also just expect that any OS, techy or not, ships with a basic, lightweight text editor. The fact that Windows seems to want to change that is an anti-feature for the entire OS.
I mourn Notepad as well, but Notepad++ is great and it hasn’t smeared shit on itself yet.
Notepad++ really earning the ++ once again.
Notepad++ is a great option if you absolutely need to be on Windows. I started using it at work because all of my colleagues were on it, now I install it on any box I have running Windows while I set them up.
The plugins are great on Notepad++ too! I use it for work, JSON Viewer makes raw jsons much easier to parse through. Compare is really nice too to compare different files and spot their differences.
Plus it’s one of the only editors left that gives a single shit about your computer’s resources.
Vim? Ed? Nano? Pico?
Vivaldi
Ahm, sure?
Yeah, was wondering about that. I’ve just installed it for the first time and while it looks OK, i’m wondering what the catch is.
Any privacy or security holes that one might to be aware of?
Just the usual one: it’s a proprietary fork of Chromium.
Ah.
Upset about notepad, so downloaded a bunch of random software that has nothing to do with editing text files?
Not A tipping point but several. They’ve been upset about a lot of things but this was the last straw.
Thought the same thing, nothing wrong with Libre Office, but why not Notepad++?
For me personally, I was using Notepad++, but the enshitification of notepad, to me, was just the last straw. It was another thing in Windows becoming worse, & there was no sign of the enshittification stopping, so I finally jumped ship & switched to Linux.
I think a lot of “Windows 11 sucks!” is kind of overblown. For example:
Have an issue with Co-Pilot in Notepad? Click the gear in the upper right hand corner, scroll down, “Copilot - Off”.
Kind of like when they tried to force Cortana on everyone in Windows 10… super easy to disable, enough people did that, then it got removed.
It sucks that the user has to take steps to clean this crap out of Windows, but it CAN be done and it’s not THAT different from clearing out all the bloatware vendors like HP used to install by default.
For example:
“My start menu is full of advertising!”
So, turn it off.
“I keep getting ads as notifications!”
(They really want people buying Xbox stuff)
Turn that off too:
If you can’t figure out these basic configurations in Windows, switching to Linux will not be an option for you. You’ll have no hope of figuring out Linux settings.
Operating Linux isn’t an issue for me.
None of this is relevant. Whether or not I could or couldn’t disable copilot in notepad would have had no effect on me as I didn’t use the app. You missed the point entirely. The enshittification of software by a company signals a shift in the company’s priorities. A shift I’m not willing to support. I’m not saying Linux is for everyone, but it also isn’t as difficult to operate as many people like to make it out to be, especially the more popular distros. And with the progress it has made over the last few years with regard to gaming, I think a lot more people would be happier with Linux than Windows.
Besides that fact, my biggest issue with windows is forced updates.
You can get gedit for Windows.
Use Copilot to write your own Notepad. With Blackjack. And hookers.
I liked notepad for it’s simplicity.
Even notepad++ was way more complex than notepad ever was.
It literally just used ASCII (or similar) characters to a file. You can’t open anything other than text on it, it won’t allow you to attach pictures, graphs, videos or even links. You need to type out the damned URL in its entirety.
N++ is great for what it is, but notepad, aside from it’s simplicity, was also great because it was everywhere.
Windows 11 started the down fall of my favorite simple text editor when they introduced… tabs.
I hate that. I close notepad, and then open it again and… Why is all this shit still here!!!
Get fucked Microsoft.
Kate exists on windows and linux
Notepad++ does way more out of the box. I’m saying this as someone who has used npp for over a decade and been using Kate since last September since indefinitely switching to Linux.
It doesn’t have AI tho.
(Joking)
Cantankerously and all at once.
Now that’s the way to do it!
Installing cross-platform programs like that is a great way to prepare for a move over to penguin town, and check for any blockers keeping you from making the leap.
My next toot will be drafted on a blank Libre page with no AI checking anything.
I have bad news for you. It’s in your OS, there is no space safe from surveillance in Windows. That said, LibreOffice is a pretty heavy and complex application compared to notepad. I’m sure they can find a much lighter and simpler text editor to use as a replacement.
