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The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

simonwillison.net

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Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#241

Post by prmph »

isityettime wrote: post #78

The new app is an unbelievable mess. Settings are senselessly organized, too. The whole thing has this aesthetic slickness and then underneath it's like the people who make it have never even used it. It's not surprising that it's pulled in absolutely massive dependencies, although I'm not sure it's the wrong call on some operating systems. LibreOffice is pretty tried and true.

Where are the AI-will-render-software-engineers-obsolete and/or vibe-coding apologists? They can make all kinds of nice-sounding arguments, but if AI is contributing to a degradation in product quality, their arguments cannot stand up to the reality we see with our own eyes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and all that.

It is the same with Claude Code. Pretty much each change Anthropic makes to it now lowers its quality. Just yesterday they auto-updated it, and now backspace in the CLI does not work reliably. It also insert the enter key command when there is a line break in text that you are pasting, causing fragments of the prompt to be sent prematurely. What the heck! And pretty much all the regressions I have experienced this year have also not been fixed.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#242

Post by johaugum »

timpera wrote: post #239
johaugum wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac Neo can be had for $600 now, and it runs Codex incredibly well! But even on the Windows machine, if you Tailscale into a free tier VM for the workloads, you'd probably have a much better time. Just leave Codex itself on your machine, if you set up computer use it will happily set up all of this for you while you have lunch.

Do you have any tips for running Codex on the Macbook Neo? Have you changed any setting? On mine, it stutters on every single chat, and I don't even have any plugins installed.

Are you on the recent update that handles long chat sessions much better? That made a big difference. Biasing towards lightweight and fast tool alternatives (uv over pip, bun over npm, ripgrep over grep, etc).

If that still doesn't resolve it, a free tier VM might be the move. I suspect OpenAI will be bundling some kind of VM with their new Astra release, which Sama said yesterday will be released soon (this week maybe?). If this new model supports much longer running tasks, you'll want a dedicated box that can run 24/7 even when your Neo is closed and asleep anyway.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#243

Post by cpursley »

vb-8448 wrote: post #116
doc_ick wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand upon this?

A full implementation/rewrite of something like word, which is pretty complex and the quantity of edge cases is insane, in a relatively short amount of time, months, is very hard. If they succeed with AI it will be huge: it's basically not possible to do it today with humans, no matter how many people you put on the job.

I'm not talking about that, but existing utility tools (in Rust) that can generate MS document format. Perhaps not perfect, but these work today.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#244

Post by BizarroLand »

fangspire wrote: post #233
marcus_holmes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo. Laws have nothing to do with morality. Or justice.

>It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo. Yes, of course. Morality is relative. In a slave-owning society, harbouring escaped slaves is immoral.

It is somewhat interesting that the version of morality an individual possesses always feels to that individual as an absolute.

"Of course it's wrong to beat your wife!" says the person who beats their children in a society that has only recently ceased infantilizing their women (USA circa 1900 +/- 30 years).

"Of course it's wrong to own slaves!" says the person whose society only recently began protesting against and/or illegalizing slavery (USA circa 1866 +/- 10 years)

They say this not knowing that had the event of their births been moved a few decades in the wrong direction their morality would have shifted with it.

Those same people might have said "Of course its wrong to beat your wife with a rod thicker than your thumb!" or "Of course its ok to own slaves as long as you treat them well!" at the same point in their lives had they been born maybe 30-50 years earlier.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#245

Post by BizarroLand »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #199
dofm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this perhaps because the aim is to read Office documents and there are (maybe, I don't know for sure) default components within Windows that can do that?

I don't think there are. Even when you have the MS Office suite installed, it doesn't really provide a good interface for LLMs or automation, so AI tools don't really use it.

And libreoffice has some really useful and easy to use tools for document manipulation and creation hiding in the background.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#246

Post by NBJack »

johaugum wrote: post #112
written-beyond wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOW DOES IT WORK FOR YOU PEOPLE?! Istg on windows, I can't get codex app, new chatgpt or chatgpt classic to work without hanging on even a moderately sized chat. I tried all of the different tricks people recommended but that shit just crawls. It was stable at some point, classic that is, but then it started being a laggy mess. I've uninstalled new chatgpt/codex app. I can't access phone chats on it, I can't use the…

Mac Neo can be had for $600 now, and it runs Codex incredibly well! But even on the Windows machine, if you Tailscale into a free tier VM for the workloads, you'd probably have a much better time. Just leave Codex itself on your machine, if you set up computer use it will happily set up all of this for you while you have lunch.

> Mac Neo can be had for $600 now

Maybe a used one?

https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ has it for ~$700

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#247

Post by RestartKernel »

isityettime wrote: post #221
mkesper wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can it be reassigned under Settings / Keyboard shortcuts?

Yes, although it's buried among a huge number of other shortcuts now, and not particularly easy to search for.

Did they restore the functionality itself? Last time I checked the overlay was just straight up not a feature anymore.

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#248

Post by 1718627440 »

ChickeNES wrote: post #69
tyre wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer use is slow and can take control of the application focus. I’ll be doing things while Claude runs in the background. Suddenly it decides to open the app and try to do something + screenshot it.

I don't know how many times I've had to yell at codex or claude to use/implement headless versions of whatever it's doing at the time, interrupts me trying to multitask and play Battlefield or Factorio while they work :P

Can't you run this under a different user or in the same, but with another instance of the desktop server?

Re: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

#249

Post by johaugum »

NBJack wrote: post #246
johaugum wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac Neo can be had for $600 now, and it runs Codex incredibly well! But even on the Windows machine, if you Tailscale into a free tier VM for the workloads, you'd probably have a much better time. Just leave Codex itself on your machine, if you set up computer use it will happily set up all of this for you while you have lunch.

> Mac Neo can be had for $600 now Maybe a used one? https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ has it for ~$700

Kind of, Swappa has new sealed units with the original warranty (and the warranty timer only starts when you set up the device), but indeed these are resale and not directly from Apple.
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