* Posts by tehstu

11 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2024

Are you better value for money than AI?

tehstu

When OpenAI allude to it being more cost effective to use their product versus headcount, have they taken into account what it would have cost to license the corpus of training materials their models inhaled?

Eurocops take down 'secure' criminal chat system known as Matrix

tehstu

Yeah, I had a bit of a "whoa, WHAT?" moment when I read the headline in my RSS feed, and was none the wiser until the very end of the article.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

tehstu

Just in case it's helpful to anyone, I recently installed Ubuntu 24.10 on my Surface Pro 3, which Microsoft have deemed unworthy of Win 11. Everything awkward (touch screen, low power standby, etc.) works out of the box. Didn't even need that custom Surface Kernel that can be found on Github. Admittedly, I don't have any AAAA batteries so cannot check the pen.

I don't think device has felt so responsive since its original Win 8.

Who had Pat Gelsinger retires from Intel on their bingo card?

tehstu

The unfortunate juxtaposition of the subtitle and "Breaking Intel" at the start of the article.

Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models

tehstu

This isn't standard Microsoft/Windows bashing but, despite how much they might protest, the reasonable assumption is that all these companies are using your data until it is demonstrated otherwise. That Pokemon Go data has military applications is the latest crowning turd in that water pipe.

That said, I did look up what Connected Services entailed after the widely distributed advice to turn it off, and it seems like "and all the other stuff Word does for you", rather than AI training. I don't remember turning it on, though.

We can clone you wholesale: Boffins build ML agents that respond like specific people

tehstu

A tip of the hat

... for the PKD reference in the headline. I'm sure he'd have a thing or two to say about this current state of affairs.

Fake reviewers face the wrath of Khan

tehstu

We got all the way to about 14 comments without a round of applause for that headline?

Bravo, sir.

Microsoft sprinkles AI 'magic' and additional storage tiers on OneDrive

tehstu

Oh, so THIS is what the OneDrive team has been working on, instead of fixing this defect which has been known to them since at least June:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/shared-folders-on-onedrive-are-appearing-as-a-link/581e271b-6c49-47e3-84fb-5fbd69cbceca?page=1&messageId=53f34856-bc95-4f34-9e02-6040b7608525

Basically, if someone shares a OneDrive folder with you, that folder is supposed to be able to seamlessly appear in your local OneDrive folder, too. This is how we've shared our family docs at home. Unfortunately, those shared folders now only appear as links, meaning you can only access the shared files via the web apps.

I've subscribed to M365 Family for years and I'm just done with this nonsense now. It's bad enough that they once took a folder I had shared called Shared Documents and somehow merged it with my personal Documents folder, so that all my random tat was shared with the family. Didn't ask for it, no idea how to undo it.

My sub runs until next year and then I'm out, and I'm taking my ball (Game Pass Ultimate sub) with me.

US claims TikTok shipped personal data to China – very personal data

tehstu

I don't disagree this isn't great, but here's a corollary headline:

"World claims {insert name of any popular app} shipped personal data to the US - very personal data"

Which we've more or less accepted.

SpaceX's Falcon anomaly could have serious implications for the space industry

tehstu

Falcon vs Shuttle

That was an odd comment to make, because it invites other comparisons such as the Shuttle's ability to repair deployed satellites. Let me know when a Falcon can facilitates an HST gyroscope repair mission.

Raspberry Pi OS airs out some fresh options for the summer

tehstu

Re: Raspberry Pi should really upstream their code more aggressively.

"But out of interest, why would you prefer official spins over what is mostly Debian with just a few tweaks anyway?"

I know this is probably an edge case, but while I daily my Raspberry Pi 5 I'm usually signed in remotely. Under x11, I was happy enough using VNC. The introduction of Wayland prevented establishing a VNC connection without the user already logged into the device, under Pi OS. I could drop to x11, which I did for a while, but given Gnome (and, thus, Ubuntu) allows remote login under Wayland and (helpfully) via Remote Desktop, I've switched to Ubuntu for now. I gather KDE has just added this remote login ability, too.

Also, out of the box, Ubuntu locks the device with Win+L. A trivial thing which I'm sure I could make Pi OS do, but it just works in Ubuntu.

And this is where someone tells me "why not install Gnome on Pi OS?" and I reply "Well, yeah... I didn't think about that until I wrote this comment."