Chris Devers

I forget what the manager told me, but it was to the effect of “yeah, this keeps happening; I’m not allowed to stop selling them, but I would if I could, so many of them end up being invalid like this.”

(Fortunately in my case, the card activation attempt failed without damaging my iCloud account!)

In my case, I just had to get a refund from the store, which they didn’t want to do (normally they don’t allow refunds on gift cards) but the store manager allowed it, because there had been a run of “bad” cards for multiple customers, and the cards were obviously compromised.

@hey.paris + @gruber.foo — I had a similar (but nowhere near as catastrophic) problem a couple years ago where an Apple gift card that I purchased at a major US dept store couldn’t be redeemed, apparently because someone “pre-activated” the number.

Yes. Apple needs to acknowledge and fix their bug.

This has nothing to do with CharGPT. This is a bug report about Apple’s software. ChatGPT is irrelevant here.

Not relevant but thanks anyway.

1. Not sure.
2. Pinch/“snakebite” flat, maybe? Two nearby holes in the tube?
3. Check for sharp spots on the rim? Consider rim tape?
4. My rate of getting flats went way down after switching to Schwalbe Marathon tires. They’re made out of magical anti-flat rubber.

I see two main problems:

* It’s accurately detecting events in the same general area, and tagging accordingly.
* It often picks the wrong event, and there’s no UI to deselect or change what it picked.

I’m more annoyed by the second one. If we could just say “no, that’s X not Y”, it would be fine.

One would have thought …

(On the other hand, I guess this is just yet another facet of #AppleIntelligence that, well, isn’t all that intelligent, and it’s hard to keep track of all the promises at this point…)

↑ @sixcolors.com @9to5mac.com @gruber.foo @appleinsider.com

I’m surprised I don’t see more mentions of this. The tagging errors are very reproducible, but I mainly see articles saying “event detection has been added for concerts & sporting events” but no follow-up to see if it works (it doesn’t).

The new #Apple feature for Photos to detect concerts seems useful.

If only it worked.

Alas.

It either detects an event or it doesn’t, but we’re not currently allowed to edit or delete whatever it decides to add as an annotation.

Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre AI engine.

Such a strange limitation. If the hardware is capable of detecting that the power source is inadequate, then the OS should communicate this information to the user so that they can, you know, try to find another power adapter. This doesn’t seem like it should be a difficult problem, no?

Consumer Confusion Regarding USB Power Adapters Link to: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/20/heer-m5-mbp-charger

@gruber.foo re: daringfireball.net/linked/2025/..., it seems like one obvious improvement would be a software change to cause macOS to raise a warning notification when the detected power supply is below spec for the system. Such a change could even be rolled out in a macOS 26 patch release.

Ah yes, the Sav-Mor Memorial Pool And Mosquito Breeding Facility…

Right up front, too.

I’m in that photo. :-)

Yeah, absolutely. :-)

I’ve been here long enough at this point that that whole area used to be much worse, so I’m optimistic that things are bending in the right direction, albeit slowly.

(Hopefully the redevelopment of the former Winter Hill Star Market jumpstarts that part of Broadway…)

…as a resident of “this part”, I take umbrage with this. East Somerville is a great place to walk around, too, once one gets past McGrath, which both the Community Path and the Gilman Underpass are handy for. :-)

It may be that the norms will evolve and people end up accepting these things, but at least for now, I for one find it deeply weird, in a panopticon way, to be in the presence of somebody wearing a camera & microphone on their face, and a transparent screen I can’t see. It’s like being interrogated.

Meta’s Ray-Bans Have Sold 2 Million Pairs, Total, as of February Link to: https://www.theverge.com/news/613292/meta-ray-ban-2-million-10-million-capacity-subscription-essilor-luxottica-earnings

@gruber.foo re: daringfireball.net/linked/2025/..., there’s also the social stigma to “smart glasses”.

A coworker had Google Glasses. It was annoying to talk to him, not knowing if he was recording/streaming the conversation, web browsing, etc.

“Take those things off so we can just talk, please.”

Ta for the note in the follow-up.

Also, this is Inman Square?

Well then howdy, ~neighbor! ;-)

I can’t see empty screw holes on the sidewalk in the last photo. Was the mailbox actually bolted down, or was it just standing there until the (apparently recently redone?) sidewalk to the right was ready for the permanent installation?

@snell.zone — I’m on the same line of thought about kayaks recently. I’m tempted to get one that I could tow with a bike to Boston Harbor, then paddle out from there. Oru has a bunch of models, including sea kayaks stable enough to use on bays, harbors, and open sea. REI often has them on sale, too…

I’ll play along…

Farthest I've been:

N: Oxford, England (unless flying over the Arctic Ocean counts)
E: Tokyo
S: Ho Chi Minh City
W: Eureka, California

Did anyone ever figure out where that guitar Prince threw landed?

Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Started in June as one sign, then another. For a week or so, it was “Berry” vs “Orange Cat”.

Then, more started appearing. A lot more.

I haven’t been by in a couple weeks, but as of mid-July, there were 32 signs, and I understand that the number has kept climbing since then.

YouTube video by Striking Chords J.R.R. TOLKIEN reads and sings his THE HOBBIT and The Fellowship of the Ring (1975)

On the same line of thought, I have a thrift-shop copy of an LP where Tolkien himself read & sang passages from “Hobbit” and “Fellowship”, and it really helps to hear how the author himself intended these lyrics to sound.

Luckily, somebody uploaded a copy to YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GsX...

I binged Serkis’s “Hobbit” & “LOTR” readings earlier this summer, and yes, they’re fantastic.

I also suggest giving the songs a chance. They’re my least favorite part of the books, just because they take me out of the narrative, but hearing a great actor put a melody & emotion to them really helps.

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.