4grams

Yet more evidence for my “never trust a self described libertarian” stance. Hasn’t failed me yet.

Because they have invested heavily into automation. A couple years ago the ford ceo went over there and came back terrified. He didn’t think it here was any way that american companies had a chance of competing.

I’m convinced this is deliberate. We are not facing a skynet situation, AI is not going rogue. This is shitty security during user initiated testing that they did not fully understand.

They want us to think that AGI is around the corner and so publicizing these hacks is doing that work in the uninformed public’s mind. I’ve had to explain to several people the reality of these attacks, but even now, watching the news, they are trying to scare us with made up stories of out of control AI.

Yeah, I see so much sandblasted brick these days from removing paint. I mean, it does look better than paint, but it’s so worn looking. Painting bricks is just a horrible idea.

The problem is that in this country there is no automatically issued national id. To get one costs money and takes time, something the demographic they are trying to prevent voting does not have in abundance.

Also, elections are run by the states in this country, and most do already require a proof. My state requires a utility bill, or ID, or something that proves you live at the address, which are tied to voter roles. So the ID thing is a red herring mostly, and non-citizen voters are usually limited to tiny fractions of percentages if any. It is not an actual problem, just a useful one.

That is one of my most used phrases. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started telling someone something simple, 10 random side conversations later, maybe I’ll remember to get to the point. It’s there that I hit them with “short story long” and then finally wrap it up…

So it’s working as intended. It’s always been the Hotel Cloudifonia.

I used to be a good tipper. I still am for genuine service, but the default “tip every transaction” has pissed me off enough that unless you personally handled my food, or performed a service for me, I instantly stab 0.

I was a a baseball game the other weekend, they had a self service kiosk for bottles of soda, a glorified vending machine. It had a default 18% tip added to the transaction that I had to drill into a menu to zero out. Fucking bonkers, not a human in sight, just a couple of sensors and a credit card terminal.

Tip culture has gotten way out of control since Covid, I’m refusing to participate anymore.

I never look at reviews, I just go in expecting to be disappointed and so usually am not. Even shitty movies are fun since I plan on them sucking…

No, I think I can downgrade it, I need to find an older version of the firmware as they don’t have it available anymore. I think I need a 2024 version.

I do have auto updates turned off, I should just block it at the router.

I don’t know about brother anymore. I have one I bought because it would work with 3rd party ink. I updated the firmware and am now locked out from using anything but brother. I would up finding a hack to get it to stop checking the ink level, so I can at least print, but it’s a temporary fix (have had to do it a few times), and it makes it unable to tell me how much ink is left. No big deal, I just run the cartridges dry, but it’s less functional than when I bought it…

Nutshell, I used to trust bother, not anymore so an open option is a big desire of mine. If this is halfway decent, I’ll pick one up.

Same, I just figure if they want to use windows, then they need to accept all the work impacting problems and stoppages. Just like how they accept the security implications of an all windows network…

It’s so entrenched though, and the typical user doesn’t know any different these days so it’s all windows and cloud now. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for these things, but it doesn’t have to be the default all the time…

This and flannel was me in the 90’s; and everyone else. I loved the thermal under a t-shirt look, let me stay both casual and warm!

I’m convinced this has been the plan for some time. My kids don’t see the point of computers when they have their phones and school iPads. They dont understand the concept of data ownership and everything is temporary to them, whatever is fed by the algorithm.

They are better off that most, my hard core nerdiness has rubbed off so they at least know how to use a computer, have built one each themselves. I just hope it continues to be possible going forward, but I’ll be willing to bet, on the other side of the age verification crap, is even more restrictions. They plan a death by a thousand cuts, until it’s no longer feasible, then. No longer legal to run your own compute.

F’ing suck, used to be available to the masses. I hope it will again, but even a raspberry pi is a luxury good these days.

I have failing hard drives in my NAS but they are nearly 4x the price from when I bought them, so I’m struggling to save for replacements. I’m so pissed off that even used enterprise stuff that used to be cheap, is now also luxury goods priced. I will be paying 259.99 for a drive I used to pay 69.99 for.

I agree that the functionality is sometimes nice, but I would never keep data in just the cloud, at least anything sensitive or valuable. Beyond not trusting someone else with the integrity of my data, I also do not want to be subject to control of it or access to it. Lastly, my data is mine, and in most cloud providers, my data will also be used for AI training.

So, I enjoy using the cloud for some things, I still keep my primary data under my control, in my own known and backed up locations.

As for the forcefulness, there are a lot of us who care deeply about ownership and privacy, and there are a lot of those that dismiss our concerns as invalid or unimportant. Not that you are by any means, just that is what I see frequently.

Bicameral mind due for a comeback I see.

I’m convinced this is all to normalize keeping your data in the cloud and other 3rd party hands. It’s hr decline of the PC market, the fact that games, movies and music no longer come on media you own, instead is now just a license to use the content…

This is all part of the strategy of ensuring we do not own our data. They want all storage of all the data to be something we have to pay to access. They want to control everything, and make access to it a subscription.

It came to me last night, how all this AI and the difficulties obtaining hardware. This is all them trying to end the idea of ownership, at least of your data. They want to control all the data, so everything you do, every picture you take, every game you play, every essay you write, will be only available in the cloud. We are getting close to the point where are must pay for every bit of our own data that we access.

This is the inevitable result. I’m very glad I’ve spent years building my own library of content. I just hope I can continue getting replacement hardware to keep it alive.

In this insane world, I’m not so sure.