I happen to be in the middle of this book right now, so I only lightly skimmed tfa, but my copy is about Marie Quinn, not as Diehl says, Marion Wheeler. I do recall that name from an older, less cohesive 2020 ebook version that I had started reading years ago but set aside. Are there different protagonists in different markets? Or different perceived realities?

I bought it a few years ago before the new book deal and the name is Marion Wheeler.

I believe it was self published back then. Although it’s a beautiful hard cover that was only like $14 on amazon. I found it funny that it’s one of my favorite recent hardcovers and is cheaper and self published.

The problem for Microsoft is that branding only works if it's built off a solid, widespread product with a good repuation. Github Copilot might be solid but it's a niche product that most people have never heard of. So people wind up associating the entire Copilot brand with the mediocre to bad Copilot experiences they are exposed to on a daily basis, such as the useless Copilot button on Copilot+ PC keyboards.

This poem should be updated for modern sensibilities:

First they came for the Communists

And I was like fuck those Commies

Because I was not a Communist

ditto

ditto

ditto

Then they came for me

And what the fuck bro this is totally not what I voted for

duh

There's a couple of ways that could go down.

One way is that you log in under a guest account and the guest account requires you to indicate your age. After your session is over, guest account logs out.

Another way is that the library has two sets of computers, ones set for adults, ones set for minors. You need access card to use computer and the librarian will give you the age-appropriate access card.

Another way is computers are set for restrictive (child) account by default. If you need adult access you have to ask librarian to unlock it.

It's been a while but as a 12 year old I completely broke the library system, installed cracked Starcraft, and refroze DeepFreeze afterwards.

Not to counteract your point, just as an anecdote I like remembering.

All this fuckery makes it hard to keep track of financial inflows and outflows, which in turn makes it easy to commit graft and corruption. Especially coupled with the forced retirement of those principled people formerly in bureaucratic positions, and the lack of consequences for lying and scheming on behalf of the kleptocracy.

Naively, the more stable a piece of software is, the more likely that its failures can be attributed to hardware error.

The scam part is the fiction perpetrated on the American public that there was a bona fide dispute with Anthropic.

*post morgem ti൬.

100% agree. Office and Windows were hugely successful because they did things that users (and corporations) wanted them to do. The functionality led to brand recognition and that led to increased sales. Now Microsoft is putting the horse before the cart and attempting to force brand recognition before the product has earned it. And that just leads to resentment.

They should make Copilot/AI features globally and granularly toggleable. Only refer to the chatbots as "Copilot," other use cases should be primarily identified on a user-facing basis by their functionality. Search Assistant. Sketching Aid. Writing Aid. If they're any good at what they do, people will gravitate to them without being coerced.

And as far as Copilot goes, if they are serious as me it as a product, there should be a concerted effort to leapfrog it to the top of the AI rankings. Every few weeks we're reading that Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, or DeepSeek has broken some coding or problem-solving score. That drives interest. You almost never hear anything similar about Copilot. It comes off as a cut-rate store brand knockoff of ChatGPT at best. Pass.

>Now Microsoft is putting the horse before the cart and attempting to force brand recognition before the product has earned it. And that just leads to resentment.

I'm surprised that they haven't changed the boot screen to say "Windows 11: Copilot Edition".

I thought Copilot was just ChatGPT - isn't that the whole point of Microsoft's massive investment in OpenAI ?

they somehow made it worse and use a less capable version with smaller context window.

The only potential upside for businesses it that it can crawl onedrive/sharepoint, and acts as a glorious search machine in your mailbox and files.

That's the only thing really valuable to me, everything else is not working as it should. The outlook integration sucks, the powerpoint integration is laughably bad to being worthless, and the excel integration is less useful than Clippy.

I actually prefer using the "ask" function of github copilot through visual studio code over using the company provided microsoft copilot portal

Someone somewhere understands that ChatGPT as a brand is too valuable to have it ruined by middle management. Hence Copilot.

Depends on the flavor. Now has Claude, as well. And Copilot Studio can extend to any model AI Foundry supports.