Why is Windows 11 so annoying?

This Week: ChatGPT Search Engine, Find a New Job and Bloatware.

Author

Speak Tech English
May 13, 2024

Happy Monday. Looking for a new opportunity in a global team? I’m compiling useful resources in the job board segment to help you. This week, it’s links to the careers pages of three expanding companies in Europe.

IN THE NEWS

What’s been going on recently?

ChatGPT Search tipped to launch next week — here's why Google should be worried

Would you switch from Google search?

www.tomsguide.com/ai/chatgpt/chatgpt-search-tipped-to-launch-next-week-heres-why-google-should-be-worried

ChatGPT Search is tipped1 to be launched soon. Here are the key points from the article:

  • Google has dominated2 the search market for more than 20 years, accounting for3 90% of all global searches

  • Very little is known about ChatGPT’s new search engine except that it will be based on asking questions and interacting with an AI model using natural language

  • The rumors stem from4 the registration of the site search.chatgpt.com

❝

“The intersection of LLMs plus search I don’t think anyone has cracked the code on yet. I would love to go and do that, I think it would be cool.

Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO

1  tipped = expected, based on some information

2  dominate = to be the most important or powerful thing

3  accounting for = to represent a percentage of something

4  stem from = to start as the result of something

JOBS BOARD

Revolut - a FinTech company with a huge range of open positions (currently advertising 272) both remote and office-based across Europe

Octopus Energy - Europe’s fastest growing energy company, currently making moves to expand into South America and Asia too

Booking.com - named as 2024’s most valuable Dutch brand, you get access to some generous travel discounts as a perk of working here

SPEAK LIKE A NATIVE

Why is Windows 11 so annoying?

I recently came across this article where the writer is ripping into (criticising) Windows 11.

Not only did I find that I agreed with a lot of his points, but I think it’s great example of an article written in the way that native speakers actually speak.

If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, I’ve extracted some of my favourite quotes and phrases: 

“I’m finally spending significant time in Windows 11, and gosh, is it janky.” 

Janky describes something that is of poor quality, e.g. an unresponsive UI, freezing or delays in performance, features that often crash, etc…   

“Windows runs on all sorts of hardware without a lot of fiddling.”

To fiddle is to make small changes until you get the result you want. You can use it as an adjective to mean something that is complicated or awkward to do/use, e.g. “Replacing the battery is fiddly.”

“So if I try to pull up a program, a file, or a setting in the usual fashion — by hitting Windows and starting to type — it mostly shows me results from the web, which are useless because it’s using Bing to find them.”

Pull up is a phrasal verb meaning to access or open something on a computer

“Edge used to be a slightly improved version of Chrome. Now it’s jammed full of sidebars and bloatware.” 

Bloatware is software or programs that use a lot of space and memory, often pre-installed on device

For a little bit of context, let’s look into the word bloatware in more detail.

bloat

We can say we are bloated (adjective), or we feel bloated, when our stomach feels full and tight. For example, “I try to avoid eating salty food because it makes me feel bloated.”

Generally, bloat (verb) means for something to swell - get bigger and rounder.

ware

This suffix is used often in technology to represent a product, e.g. software, hardware…

So when we combine them, we can understand that bloatware represents software that is bloated with unnecessary components, making it less efficient.

VOCAB OF THE WEEK

Describing Accidental Damage

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