Apple . General
XGecu T76 on Windows 11 ARM
On November 27, 2025 by Jonathan ZdziarskiRunning the XGecu T76 chip programmer with x86 emulation has been miserably slow, even on my M4 MacBook Pro, and so I finally took some time to figure out how to get it working on Windows 11 ARM in Parallels on Apple Silicon. There wasn’t any information online about this, except for one person who had some luck with Zadig, but had no idea what they actually did. I’ve documented the entire process below, which works with or without Zadig; the key is not only changing the driver to a native WinUSB driver, but also correcting some crucial GUIDs in the registry to ensure driver matching works in the software. For this, I’ve created a simple registry file that can be easily imported.
Essays . Machine Learning . Opinion
The AI Learning Plateau
On November 2, 2025 by Jonathan ZdziarskiThere’s an old 1985 sci-fi series I remember watching as a kid. In Otherworld S1E1, the Sterling family, on vacation in Egypt, winds up in a parallel dimension where they encounter a civilization of self-evolved AI androids. Parts of the episode were amazingly spot on to how today’s LLMs are playing out. In the episode, the teenage son (Trace) falls in love with an AI, and the android itself is entirely convinced she not only has a soul, but is genuinely in love with him too. While this android city looks relatively human-like, and performs similar tasks (such as eating, working, etc), the show highlights some peculiarities where they’ve attempted to copy human behavior, but failed in eerie ways. One of my favorite scenes is where the Sterling family matriarch (June) visits the grocery store in this strange civilization, and finds only cans labeled, “Meat” and “Good Food”. The AI world seemingly lacked a crucial connection with humanity to develop creativity beyond a superficial level. The insults that robots cast at each other were humorously corny, such as “get your unit checked!”; when they asked if you were born yesterday, they literally meant it because that’s all they understood.
Gaming
A Crash Course in Arcade Hardware Hacking
On November 1, 2025 by Jonathan ZdziarskiWith several different blog posts scattered about, I thought it best to put a link to all of the arcade hardware hacking material in one place, so here it is.