Notes on AI, tools, and tech.
I’ve been using GitHub Copilot for about a year now. It’s good. Really good. But not everyone wants to pay $10 a month for autocomplete. Some people code once a week. Some are students. Some just want to see if AI-assisted coding actually helps them before committing to a subscription. So I spent the last … Read more
[Someone Keeps Triggering WordPress Password Reset on My Site. So I Killed It] Got a bunch of these emails this morning. “Password reset request for your account.” Over and over. From my own site. I didn’t ask for them. Someone—or something—was poking the “lost password” button on piall.com. Annoying? Yes. Scary? Not really. At least … Read more
Last week, I started seeing complaints pop up about a Windows update. People were saying their games kept crashing. Others said Windows Hello stopped working. I thought maybe it was a few unlucky folks with weird setups. Then I looked into it. Turns out, this one is a bit of a mess. I think the … Read more
Google just quietly changed how watermarks work in Gemini. And honestly? It’s a smarter move than it sounds. The headline is simple: you can now turn off the visible “sparkle” watermark on images, videos, and music generated by Gemini. Go to Settings → Media Watermark, flip it off, and your outputs look clean. No more … Read more
I’ve been messing around with AI coding tools for a while now. And honestly? I got tired of switching between five different apps just to test one model against another. ChatGPT for one thing, Claude for something else, then back to DeepSeek for a third task. It was getting ridiculous. So when I heard about … Read more
So Anthropic started watermarking every Claude output. And honestly? I had the same thought everyone else did. When I first heard about it, I assumed they were doing the usual trick—zero-width characters, invisible Unicode, weird spaces that look normal but aren’t. That’s what every other “watermark” has been. That’s what I would have done if … Read more
I’ve been watching the reactions to Anthropic’s watermark announcement for the past few days, and honestly? Most of the hot takes are missing the point. The short version is this: Starting August 2, 2026, all new Claude models will embed machine-detectable watermarks in generated text. Images and SVGs get C2PA metadata signatures too. It applies … Read more
The short version: DeepSeek open-sourced their Agent harness — the scaffolding that turns a raw model into something that actually works in the real world. And they did it in a way that openly admits what everyone in the industry has been quietly realizing: the model itself isn’t the whole story anymore. Honestly? I spent … Read more
I’ll be honest: my Windows 11 PC was taking forever to start up. Like, go grab a coffee and maybe come back forever. It wasn’t always like this. When I first upgraded, it felt snappy. But over time, things got sluggish. I’d press the power button, walk away, do a small chore, and still wait. … Read more
Apple’s September event is coming, and this year’s lineup sounds different than usual. Based on what’s been floating around, we might see five new devices. But here’s the kicker – Apple might not show the full iPhone 18 family all at once. The standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18e, and the second-gen iPhone Air? Those could … Read more