Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | codeulike's commentslogin

Exactly. So many people on hn have no idea how diversified Microsoft is, and have no inkling of what the enterprise market is like

On the contrary, nobody here is suggesting Microsoft isn't really diverse. They're suggesting that Apple is going to start to eat into their SMB market.

Nobody at Microsoft is saying, "we don't care if Apple chips away at SMB because we have Call of Duty"


Microsoft offers Office for Mac. It's a thing they do. It's the full fledged Office suite. They see a Mac user the same way they see a Windows user - a source of revenue.

Office for Mac is increasingly getting feature parity with the windows version, but it is not fully there yet.

For example, if you want to use "data model" in Excel, it is only available in the windows version.


Yeah and ms access is completely missing. It lacks the full version of onenote too.

The one thing that shines is Mac outlook where on windows you'll soon have to put up with that joke of a web app.


Not always. There's no Minecraft for Mac, they even prohibited Macs running the iPad version. It's essentially been ported to Apples APIs but purposely withheld from macOS.

I'm talking about enterprise software, not games. Minecraft exists for Mac, grab the Java version.

Anyone on Bedrock Minecraft is probably there for the cross-platform multiplayer. The Java version doesn't substitute for that. (MS made Bedrock and Java incompatible so they can rent-seek on closed mod and server-hosting "marketplaces"; can't let people share things and have fun without paying a middleman after all, think of the wasted "productivity"!)

I've never seen any adverts in Windows. Just saying.

How many of the people pearl-clutching in this thread actually use Windows?


I think it's more likely that what you consider ads and what we consider ads don't quite line up.

No, I just havent seen anything in Windows that could be described as an advert. Where are all these adverts supposed to be showing up exactly?

OneDrive pop-ups in the system tray, OneDrive buttons in explorer are two of the most egregious because they are presented as though they are not ads.

I turn off OneDrive so I dont think I have seen those. But in what way are those ads? OneDrive is part of Windows, like iCloud is part of the Apple ecosystem

I resisted upgrading to windows 11 for as long as I could because of all this hysteria. I actually did upgrade 6 months ago and it seems ... fine? I havent seen any adverts; they must be somewhere I'm not visiting. The start menu search still excludes web results like i told it to with Windows 10 (the setting must have come across). I havent seen copilot pop up anywhere annoying in Windows (although it is everywhere in ms office as similar things are popping up in whatsapp, jira, google search, every app).

I'd say the problem these days is not Ads, its Content. Firefox and Chrome (desktop and android) and Edge start with a tab of content - celebrity tat and sensationalistic world news. Windows taskbar was the same, weather and news gave me a load of tatty Content. You go and find the setting to turn it off and it goes away. But I hate Content much more than I hate Ads. Content is the problem and on that front Windows is about the same as everything else.


You're absolutely right! I should have sent $5.00 for that transaction and not $500,000. I will generate a letter for you to print and sign and send to your bank to notify them of my mistake. Would you like me to generate a bankruptcy filing for you as well?

LLMs rarely admit fault, you gotta shift blame onto the user:

> You're absolutely right! The transaction was submitted as $500,000 instead of $5.00. Since that's what was entered on your end, you'll need to contact your bank to resolve it. I will generate a letter for you to print, sign, and send to your bank if needed. Would you like me to generate a bankruptcy filing for you as well?


It's backed by a crypto wallet that it's using for its funds - if you decide to put $500k into the wallet that you've giving carte blanche access to an LLM, maybe you do deserve to shoulder some of the blame

Claude always says it is sorry for screwing up when I point out that it screwed up.

"Never apologize" into the customized instructions seems to work well for that specific issue.

This is the funniest (but seriously not funny at all) thing I've seen on the internet since the start of the whole "AI" craze. And it's all too true.

But less. Total money from them going into system is lower than it otherwise would be, which must have an effect

Definitely not going to dinner round your house

At some point later I got around to playing with DC fast charging ... That market still has a long way to go as far as sorting out its business model, as billing based on time vs energy is completely unfair ... An excuse that's offered less and less often is that pricing by kilowatt-hours delivered is prohibited in some states by utility regulatory rules.

I didn't know they were billing for DC charging in the US based on Time instead of kwh. Thats odd. In Europe its just kwh.


> In Europe its just kwh.

In the EU, yes. When you go to those dark corners of Europe that never achieved the membership, all bets are off.

In Montenegro and Serbia they charge per minute because the only entity allowed to sell kwh's is the national electricity company (in Serbia it's owned by Russia, so it is heavily legally protected).


No need to go further than dead center EU to see chargers where the cost has a time component, and an energy component, and even a (small) one time fee. Sometimes the charger is inside a paid parking, there that comes on top. These aren't shady operators either either, just the way they saw fit to prevent abuse and make more money.

Some have reasonable limits to prevent abuse [0], others just charge the customer as much as they can get away with.

[0] https://www.tanke.io/oeffentliche-ladestationen/


Is abuse here just parking in the charger and leaving for a few hours, assumingly skipping any parking fee if you're only paying for kWh?

Abuse means leaving your car parked while it is not actively charging.

Fine to leave for a few hours if your car needs a few hours to charge fully.

Not fine to leave for a few hours if your car was 15 minutes from full.


In Italy there are enough chargers that charge for both kWh and time connected. kWh for what you use and connected to discourage being connected all the time.

My understanding is that some US states have regulations against selling power by the kWh unless you are a registered power utility. This is an old regulation meant to be about landlords marking up electric rates to tenants etc.

Most states have updated their laws to account for EV charging providers, and in those states we pay per kWh.


Arguably it should be both. Sitting and occupying a DC fast charging booth, especially once you're not charging at the full rate, represents an opportunity cost since someone else could be using it.

I used a Tesla charger (as a non-Tesla driver) recently. I think their pricing model is pretty good: pay per kWh (varies between peak and off-peak), and if the station is busy they can impose a "congestion charge" for anyone occupying a charger and not charging, or charging above 80% when it's not necessary for their journey (presumably only works for Teslas where the satnav knows about your journey and charge locations).

> especially once you're not charging at the full rate

I don't think you want that as no car will be able to charge at 250kW for very long for example.

And I believe we're starting to see even higher peak charging rates. As always, there's no simple answers


Idle rates are different than just straight charged by time.

I know Electrify America used to, but in recent years, I haven't come across any time-based chargers (but I haven't used a charger outside of Texas since 2022, so may be an issue in only certain states, as other comments have alluded to)

Later on ( https://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/ev/dcfc/app-problem.h... ) he talks about the app problem, and I believe the UK and possibly the EU are mandating that chargers must support contactless payment, so you can just do it with your regular bank card.

I've never paid by the minute. Tesla Superchargers often deliver less energy per minute when they're busy (sometimes much less!) and it would be frustrating if they charged per-minute.

Other systems I've seen (Chargepoint) also seem to be energy-based.

The Supercharger network is well done. It's a shame that they took this long to open up to other car models because they really do get a lot of things right.


Careful. Some superchargers will now charge you extra per minute as soon as you cross 80% capacity (regardless of your charge limit).

Does this also apply to non-Teslas? I'm guessing there's a bit of two-way communication from car to charger, for authentication/billing purposes but also for congestion fees like charging beyond 80%. Does the app notify you to take your car off the charger?

I understand the reasoning but sympathize with the luddites who shun all this technology. Imagine going on a road trip with your EV, stopping for a bite to eat and refresh while putting your car on the charger. Maybe there was a long line or you needed a long bathroom stop, so your car sits at the charger "too long" and you get a nice penalty.


It's almost all by the kWh here, but perusing PlugShare I've seen a few level 2 chargers here and there that charge by the minute. Usually that's a sign of a charger that was set up a while ago and is owned by someone who hasn't checked on it since.

I think fast chargers in rush hour times will also bill for time to discourage long/slow charges on them. Naturally that'll vary on whoever sets the costs, but it does exist in EU as well.

In some states, like Georgia, you are considered an electric company if you bill in kWhs. So some DCFC companies simply billed in the time equivalent. $0.30/min-$0.50/min.

Time based billing is almost completely eliminated. It was always state-by-state, due to local laws not being setup for dispensing of electricity as a business model.

Nah, there's plenty of places that will require you pay both kWh and time spent on the charger.

And the app situation is as dire as the author says too.


In Europe, sometimes it's just kWh, other times it's kWh and time. After charging is done, it's just time.

It's rare to be billed on time, its usually billed by energy delivered.

nope, some places in Belgium and Austria are per minute. I guessimate that the charge speed is frickin’ fast, no way to be sure and I would rather see kW number go up in the dasboard

I’ve charged in 30 states, it’s kwh every single time.

Mowt states have changed the laws in the past 10 years. When nobody (other that lead acid convestions done at home) had an ev it did't matter that the law didn't allow for charging by kwh as nobody other than a utility wanted to do that anyway. When evs changed to mainstream laws changed. There are still some free public chargers near me from before the law change (at 6kw max charge rate they not often used and so don't cost them much to keep it.

Amusingly, the only DCFCs near me that charge by time and not kwh are run by utilities.

You may not understand it, but it is grammatically correct.


Only because you read it as Doctor Who (the noun, which should have included quotes or underline or italics).


You always write for an audience. BBC viewers can probably be assumed to know about Doctor Who.


Capitalizing it is sufficient in this context.


This means llms have not improved in their programming abilities for over a year. Isn’t that wild? Why is nobody talking about this?

Because hype makes money.


My pc, maybe because of the external keyboard I'm using, occasionally decides that Scroll Lock is On and then Excel becomes unusable ... The solution is to bring up the On Screen Keyboard and toggle the virtual scroll lock key ...


I wonder how that happens? Do you press Ctrl-Home a lot (to go to the very start of a document), and maybe you missed and hit Fn-Home, if you have a Dell OEM keyboard https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... , Fn-Home toggles Scroll Lock...


Yeah I suspect its something like that. Its been hard to track down because its only noticable once you fire excel up


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: