They showed up this morning to start replacing my exterior doors, and the new front door is finished except for the interior trim. They might not make much progress Tuesday, unless the rain really does stop at noon, but with the big one out of the way, the other two should be done by Wednesday afternoon.

Which is good, since it looks like the temperature’s going to drop 20°F after that, making for a chilly Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend.

(I’ll have to have the security company switch to wireless sensors for at least the front door; the way it’s made as one unit, complete with the giant half-round transom (which gave the crew a real challenge getting it into place), running the wire through it would be a lot of work and void the warranty)

From his lips to Cook’s ears…

Next year’s iOS and MacOS releases are supposed to be focused on quality. And “AI”. And removing all remnants of x86 CPU support (while still including some degree of software support). No news yet about hiring a team of user-interface designers to replace the idiots who inflicted Liquid Ass on the world.

Meanwhile, in a formerly-basic text editor…

Microsoft is improving Notepad with streaming GenAI, so you don’t have to stare at an empty window while it’s still making shit up.

(pro tip: do not ask Qwen Image for a “tractor beam” when you’re working with Legos)

Government verification

I went to login to my Social Security account. Not that I can retire any time in the next ten years, but with the increase in identity theft, not just by illegals, it’s good to check occasionally.

Years ago, I set up my “login.gov” account for TSA Pre and Global Entry. When I moved back to Ohio, I updated it with my new address and phone number, and today it correctly texted a 2FA code to my phone.

But it decided that using the common account to log into a different service (Social Security) required ID re-verification, so I let it take pictures of me and my passport, and once it processed those, it said I needed to login again, complete with 2FA. And it refused to accept my phone number as “associated with me”. I was forced to plug in and turn on my California phone so they could text a code to it. Three years after I changed the number in their system, and mere minutes after they’d used the current number to authenticate me.

Yeah, let’s trust the federal government with full control over every aspect of our lives; what could go wrong?

(not my actual roof vultures, who I’ve only gotten quick phone snapshots of a few times from the ground; the angle and perspective of this genai creation is nearly impossible to achieve outside of a studio with human-habituated birds. FYI, I was puzzled when I first tried to gen this pic, because I asked for buzzards and got falcons; turns out this is one of those America-versus-Europe things where we mean “turkey vulture” and they mean “pretty much any raptor”)

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