From Op-ed

Gemini 3.6 Flash Released

Over the last few weeks, my main takeaway with the Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 releases was their respective costs and cost performances. Neither company particularly hides the fact that the real models they offer are paywalled. It creates a distinct entry barrier for those who simply are not the target audience of the marketing materials…

Fable 5 Now Included in Max Subscription

Fable 5 saga is finally coming to an end with Anthropic deciding to include the flagship model in Max. Since I am on Max tier for this month temporarily, the announcement is disappointing in two ways: a. Fable won’t be available on a similar price tier as GPT 5.6 Sol, and b. Fable is simply…

1Password Adds Claude Support

If you have been on a vibe coding frenzy thanks to Fable 5, 1Password has something to offer for you today. The company has announced a new feature that fills website credentials on Claude’s behalf. By the developer’s claim, the feature is designed to have zero-exposure to the agent — tasks are handled by AI,…

Sony to Stop PS Disc Production

Sony is winding down disc production for new titles as of 2028. The signs were on the wall. Digital-only storefronts. Disc-less consoles. Competitors who went digital years ago, or are still trying to. However, the announcement was ill-received. It was seen as contempt for consumers’ rights. For archival efforts of video games. For anyone who…

Fable 5 Trial Extended, Again

The great game of chicken is afoot. Fable 5 trial period is extended, yet again, to July 19th. Albeit anecdotal, there are numerous developers sharing similar stories about the cost performance of the new ChatGPT model, GPT-5.6 Sol. The community consensus agrees Fable 5 and Sol are both frontier models delivering similar results. What’s staggering…

macOS to Drop Encrypted HFS+ Support by 2027

Apple announced that macOS 28, which will be released in 2027, will not support encrypted HFS+. The support document simply calls it “Mac OS Extended file system”. You may want to double-check old archival HDDs if they’re still formatted to encrypted HFS+. I’d recommend simply reformatting the drive to encrypted APFS, though decrypting the volume…

Fable 5 Trial Extended

Fable 5’s trial period got an extension. If you had a chance to try it on an existing subscription, you already know whether it worked out for your actual project. There’s no stronger evidence than that. For me, Fable 5’s capability was amazing in its own right — but not at usage-based pricing. A bit…

Fable 5 Is Back, Also Sonnet 5 Is Out

Anthropic announced Sonnet 5 this week, described to be as capable as Opus 4.8 but cheaper. Rough timing — Fable 5’s return ate all the attention. I haven’t had the chance to do any coding with it in-depth yet. But from the limited exchange I had over chat, Sonnet 5 still struggled with technical specs.…

The Murky Rabbit Hole of DIY NAS

My NAS is reaching the end of its design. Twenty terabytes usable across five bays, a few hundred gigabytes left, and it’s warned me twice now that I’m nearly out. I’ve bought time where I could, moving what I can to the pool meant for cold archive. But the design is aging out on more…

What Remains of Fable 5 Ban

Apple said Apple Intelligence would bring AI to its brand. It was a broken promise, unless Genmoji is to be considered a success. Apple is now saying the new Siri AI will deliver the promises they made back in 2024. Neither iOS 27 nor macOS Golden Gate has been officially released (available only in beta),…

Steam Machine Out to Have Pie and Eat It Too

Valve announced yesterday the specs and price point of the new Steam Machine. It has been speculated Valve is coming after the console market, specifically, the “couch” market. The first Steam Machine from 2015 was a commercial failure, in large part because the pricing wasn’t agreeable to either console or PC gamers. After the successful…

Quest to Find Ergonomic Keyboard of Today

Remember Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard? It was legendary in retrospect. It was a tenkeyless design with a detached numpad, yet fully functional as a full-sized keyboard. It didn’t need additional software to set up — it was pure plug and play. I had written simple configurations for Sculpt Keyboards before; it was a testament of what…

“Ethical Concern” is AI Dunce Cap

Storage is at an all-time premium nowadays, with even the price of SSDs and HDDs being affected by AI craze. As much as I would love to say ‘rip the discs raw’, there is bound to be a real world limit on how much storage I can secure for a self-hosted media server. My search…

Google Announced “Honey” Dipped in AI

Just last year, browser extension Honey suffered an infamous scandal. Now owned by PayPal, the extension promised to find the best deal, including finding the best coupon codes. The exposé revealed Honey’s business model focused more on being a man in the middle in both security and transaction. And it also reveals a gap, a…

The Case of the ‘Indulgent’ Subscription

Bit of context before I get into the whole fiasco. The choke point of physical ownership is real estate. Everyone who has ever tried owning every contents would know this. At some point, medium takes up more space than the media: books, movies, musics, video games, just about all of them. Movies, especially, would hit…