I had to edit a MS word thing through my new university microsoft account, and holy cow, all the mansplainy suggestions microsoft thrusts in there are like Clippy went and got an MBA and needs to make sure that you know the $60k he paid for it was absolutely definitely worth it.
@sundogplanets 60k? Even back in my day a simple BA pushed me past 50k and that's after well over half was paid by the government as a simple handout. This was 20 years ago.
Give clippy a break. He's doing what he needs to get by. He's got many thousands in education loans to pay off and nobody wants what he was told would be a good paying job when he got out. Now they outsource that shit to third world countries with people even more desperate.
It’s just been pointed out to me that the reason Apple runs a trade-in programme for older devices is so they can reduce the size of the used market, and has fuck all to do with recycling.
@ItsThatDeafGuy@DJDarren I was just looking and they are incredibly expensive. An alternative might be to simply not allow the tv to connect to the internet and use your locked down box. This isn't entirely possible with at least Roku TV's as they won't function at all until you log in at least once. My google TV I've never logged in and was working with my PS4 before I had Internet so that should work. Don't know about new LG.
Trump keeps recycling this “argument” again and again without ever apparently realizing he’s saying that Joe Biden could throw him into a deep dark dungeon and keep him there and Trump would have no escape.
It’s another case of: either Trump’s that dumb or he thinks all his marks are that dumb.
@Green_Footballs I mean...he's openly stated that his followers have no moral values at all. That they'd still vote for him if he shot someone on 5th ave. He's been reported by many witnesses as having nothing but scorn for them. They disgust him because they are poor and therefor stupid.
He also knows that the argument works for him but not for "liberals" like Biden. Conservatives would shit dixie flags if Biden tried to claim absolute immunity due to his position.
@nocontexttrek What's it like to be beheaded you think? Sometimes when I crack my neck I get this shock through my body and I almost pass out. Is it more like that, or, if its fast enough, do you just not really feel it and just sort of have this phantom body experience for 30 seconds while your brain suffocates? Or is it 30 seconds of pain? Reports have been made of severed heads looking around or getting mad for being slapped...but we can't really know.
All it would take for AI to completely collapse is a ruling in the US saying these companies have to licence the content they used to train these tools.
They simply would never reach a sustainable business model if they had to fairly compensate all the people who wrote, drew, edited, sang or just created the content they use.
Simply being forced to respect attribution and licenses would kill them. Will that ruling ever happen? Maybe not. Should it? I think so.
@thelinuxEXP I would be surprised if it doesn't fall under "fair use" doctrine. We wouldn't want to do away with fair use, which lets us quote each other and learn and apply new techniques without asking permission. Requiring licensing and such for AI training would need to show that the output of that training is derivative and seeing as that it's learning in ways very similar to the way we do...that could be problematic. It's a big, complex issue.
@campuscodi “I also think whoever was responsible for it should be fired,” she added.
FFS! Get over yourselves people! Nobody set out with the intention of creating fake porn of some 50 yo whoever. At worse several people decided to try something fun and depended on a massively over-hyped technology to do so. You can't cancel people over every damn, stupid thing or everyone's going to be on welfare.
There simply is no established or easy way to detect backdoors done the #xz way. We give powers and trust to maintainers because that is the development model.
Anyone suggesting there is an easy fix has not understood the issues at hand.
But we are Open Source which allows everyone to dig, check, read code and investigate.
@bagder I think maybe the best thing that could be done is if a company really depends on a piece of software written as a hobby they should try to help the maintainer to avoid burnout. From what I understand of this whole thing, it all boils down to one developer suffering undue mental stress trying to keep up with the demands of users to the point of giving up, which the attacker thoroughly exploited. If we were all nicer to each other maybe this crap wouldn't be so easy.
I'm working on a video to see what the Linux community (or at least people who follow me) actually use.
So, I created a little form, hosted on my Nextcloud (hopefully it's up to the task...)
It's only up for 2 days, so don't hesitate to share it around, it will help me "touch grass" and see if my preconceived notions are confirmed, or invalidated!
@thelinuxEXP I went to the trouble of filling it out and got an "error"--with no indication as to why. I left some answers undone because your pole depends a great deal on my only using one computer regularly.
The panel-mounted jack for the foot pedal slipped into the interior of my sewing machine, and the only way to access it was to open up the machine. I'll be stunned if (a) I can get it back together with all the parts & screws in the right places and (b) it works properly afterwards. 🤞🤞🤞
I really hate the 'it's immoral to stay on twitter' stuff. Many people have spent their lives in hostile infrastructure. That didn't start with Musk and it won't end when he's gone. Most black people in America have to pay their taxes to governments run by white supremacists, women have to pay the people who take away their rights. It sucks, but if someone's support network lives on hostile ground and yours doesn't maybe think on that before you judge.
@quinn It seems to me a pretty major false equivalency to defend the morality of staying on a platform you can freely just not be on to people who are born into situations where they are forced to participate in or support something horrible. I dgif if someone is or is not a twit, but this is seriously comparing apples to oranges.
Born in 1906, computer scientist Grace Hopper invented the first compiler for computer programming language & was among the first programmers of the Harvard Mk1 computer.
@juliank@georgetakei This was at least true in the US in the 90's and early 00's--but as a student I found the standard deduction zeroed me out anyway so whatever.
You can take this test to see how "Normal" you are, and also how radically left wing you are! LOL Please share the results if you feel like it, or do nothing at all, because it really doesn't matter!
We can't keep transferring attention and wealth to billionaires while blindly hoping they will selectively choose to focus their attention and resources on the world’s actual problems. It's like giving a room full of 5-year-olds a tub of ice cream and an iPad and hoping they retile the kitchen.
I'm alone for a few days because academia+farming means we live far away from all of our family, but have lots of animals, so travel is really really hard. My partner+kids haven't visited his family in 5 years, so it was definitely his turn to visit, and my turn to stay with the farm.
Anyway...all that to say, I'm glad I have this space to complain and interact (and share puppy pictures) so I don't exclusively talk to my animals for the next few days! Thanks, computer friends.
I wrote about Substack founder Hamish McKenzie's nonsense answer to an open letter about Nazis on his platform, and asked him some follow-up questions.
Why The Reframe is probably moving homes in 2024, and how subscribers can help creators who are there.
#COVID19, privilege, and our duty to protect others. STUDY of infants finds “Incidence was 7× higher during the Omicron versus the pre-Delta period. The cumulative case hospitalization rate was 4.1%. For every 74 hospitalized infants, one death occurred.” And in a nation that is 60% white, 62% of infant deaths were non-white.
Because of low infant vax rates (<5%), waning adult immunity & normal behaviors, “infant COVID-19 will remain a persistent public health problem.”
@augieray I can actually understand black peoples' reluctance to vaccinate, seeing as how they were treated as more expendable than lab mice. It's really sad that it ends up costing them the most. It's beyond the pale that we service mainly white communities more than others, leaving even those who WILL vaccinate in the lurch.
I’m old enough to remember when smoking (and smoke) was everywhere, and the idea that smokers might ever be asked or made to stop was seen as absurd. Many kids (including me) got horrible bronchitis every single year and had other sorts of breathing problems all the time. Many parents (and other adults) died early.
@histoftech As a kid I ate candy cigarettes. There was even a kind that you blew into and it puffed out this stuff to make mock smoke. People were only just recently asking, "Is this OK?"
TayTay:
A billionaire with a mobile economic booster on wheels
12 Grammys
Time’s person of the year
Prompted tens of thousands of young voters to register
Trump:
Lost money owning casinos
Defrauded students with “university”
Ran an airline into the ground
Faces 91 charges including trying to overturn a free and fair election
Sold our nation’s highest secrets (possibly lost money on it)
Stole from charity
@flexghost To be fair, it takes a lot of skill to lose money running a casino. It's gotta be sort of like an MMA fighter trying to steal candy from a baby and the baby kicks his ass. Not everyone is capable of that level of success.
