Posts by JPCavendish 162 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Aug 2025
Eliteboard G1a: "If your monitor, like the majority on the market, doesn't have a USB-C input, you can use an included USB-to-HDMI adapter to connect. You can use a 65 W USB-C power adapter to juice the G1a if it's not getting electricity directly from the monitor."
So you buy this, then you buy 2 monitors, and 2 mice, and a couple of power supplies, all to avoid carrying the same thing but with a screen. What on earth is the point?
You and I (and likely everyone here) know what the system is and what it can/can't do; but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily apply to Cletus from Bumfuck, Idaho who bought a Cybertruck because the dealer told him it could rotate the Earth backwards if he floored the loud pedal.
It's the "lowest common intelligence denominator" doctrine; same reason they put 'Warning: contains nuts' on a packet of peanuts, or 'Caution: hot!' on a cup of McCoffee.
And you're right on Autopilot closely matching the real capabilities (PPL holder here) but you'd have to bear in mind most people wouldn't know what an ACTUAL autopilot does or doesn't do if it slapped them in the face with an MCAS patch.
I would say BMW comes closer to the actual truth calling theirs Copilot*; at least in the opinion of the Great Unwashed that's less likely to mean it can do it all.
* Yes yes I know copilots/FOs are generally just as trained as the PIC, but the public doesn't know that. Which pisses off a great many of the FOs I know.
It's a Sinclair C5 that's missing a wheel. Except the C5 was a looker compared to this monstrosity.
"Funnily enough, a lot of them were in upper management . . ."
TRUE upper management types are generally far too busy bending the company over a barrel to interact personally with IT; they have minions for that. In fact even their minions have minions. If you're on the Helldesk and somebody calls claiming to be UM, chances are they are a LOT lower on the slippery totem pole than they think they are and are hoping to "motivate" you with their job title. Which generally works as well as you would expect.
'The higher up you are in the company has no bearing on how fast your problem gets fixed; it just determines which floor we're on when I throw you out of the window'
In the US you can still use sideloading tools like AltStore/SideStore if you wish, using your computer to self-sign apps with your own, or a different account. BuildStore and AppDB offer paid and/or enterprise apps. You don't need, and never have needed, an AppleID to use your iPhone; you can go down the free/3rd party route if you wish.
The App Store Freedom Act is on its way through Congress, and when it passes there will be other official app stores available as well in the US; which gives an added "official" dimension next to the current Wild West approach.
None of this changes the fundamental truth that if you have content locked to an account or a digital ID, in either the Apple OR the Google walled gardens, you are SOL if they decide they don't like you. You can't get it back or transfer it to another account; and if you have a backup copy, you're still fucked because when you try to install it it will ask you to sign in with the ID you used to purchase it. You have opportunities in both walled gardens to sideload or use alternative app sources if you want to go down that route, but that's not what this article or comment thread is about. It's about being at the mercy of the provider when you use cloudy services.
Which is the original point.
You can do all of that on iOS too. You don’t need to interact with Apple at all unless you want their ecosystem; you don’t even need an Apple ID.
iOS alternative app stores like AltStore, Aptoide, and BuildStore offer apps outside Apple's control, offering emulators, tweaked apps, and unique software, with new EU-focused stores like the Epic Games Store (iOS) emerging due to regulations. These vary from sideloading platforms for power users (AltStore) to paid marketplaces (BuildStore) and newer EU-compliant options, enabling app installs via web distribution or marketplaces alongside the official App Store.”
Well, that's lovely. Whatever works for you (note that *I* am not insulting your choice of ecosystem). You're moving the goalposts though; we were talking about app/account-locked content and media not UI/UX, and my point still stands that in this respect, iOS and Android are exactly the same.
Ahh I see what you are now.
I never argue with zealots. It only drags me down to their level and gets me covered in their spittle.
Google Play Store: Locked out of my account, can I transfer content to another account?
"...it's the scenario you didn't think about (and there's always one) that's going to get you."
And it's that bit of insight and self-reflection that means you're probably far safer than somebody who says "look at my invulnerable setup - they'll never get me".
I feel the same way about scams. I'm pretty certain that the scams of today will not get me. I keep up to date, do my research, and I have good operational practices which I continually re-evaluate. It's the scams of tomorrow that I'm less certain about. The things that we didn't see coming because they're not here yet.
I mean - yes, but you’re not an average user. Most people (including our hero mentioned in TFA) have a ton of DRM’ed or account-locked content that they would lose if their access was blocked.
Which is my point here really; for most people, it doesn’t matter if you have backups or not - if you use cloudy account-dependent services then you’re completely at the provider’s mercy if they one day decide they don’t like you.
It's never a good look to sneer at another's misfortune.
Besides, having your stuff backed up doesn't necessarily mean you can use it - he mentions he's lost access to thousands of dollars worth of purchased software and media, which is likely tied irrevocably to his AppleID, meaning it's now bricked as it can't be transferred.
I have an Asus portable monitor which plugs straight into my iPhone's USB-C. Works great when I need a 'desktop experience' but can't be bothered to bring the laptop (a.k.a. "watching films on a plane"). Apart from this use case, I really struggle to see the point of any vertically folding phone let alone a trifold.
"Also worth pondering what happens to all the less popular bits of animal like rectums, spleens, eyeballs, gizards, udders, etc"
Pet food, as a general rule. Or more obscure foodstuffs like Haggis or blood sausage. You won't usually find these things in your average frankfurter or frozen hamburger.
Apple considers iPhone to be a proper name; like John. It's an attempt to anthropomorphize our relationship with their product.
Apple more or less pioneered this, but other companies are now doing similar e.g. Google and Pixel "New features and upgrades for Pixel".
That is horrific. Rabid consumerism at its very worst.
I have nothing against luxury products per se, but there should be at least a tenuous link between the price charged and the product itself; or at the VERY least, the company should be able to make an effort at explaining the link even if the rest of the world laughs at them.
Thanks for the apology. Where I was coming from was based on the fact that Google recently went to such great lengths to program anti-bias into Gemini that the pendulum swung completely the other way; generating images of black US Founding Fathers, African and Chinese Nazi soldiers and ethnically diverse Vikings in an effort to be "inclusive". It doesn't require a massive leap of imagination to apply this to professions as well as history.
This is what I meant by anti-bias programming is still bias; it's biasing the output toward whatever version of 'truth' is programmed in, regardless of how incorrect that might be.
I was of course being facetious with my comment. That said, I tried asking Gemini just now ("show me some images of typical American firefighters"), one of them was this. A fair few others included black firemen, which likely reflects the reality of American city firefighting.
It's not quite a one-legged lesbian, but it's also not exactly all White. I do have to clarify that I've been asking Gemini for ethnicity breakdowns quite a lot recently, e.g. criminality in the UK.
I then asked Gemini to explain whether this photo represented the reality of ethnic diversity in firefighters, and it said this:
"The reason image searches for professions like "firefighter" often show predominantly White males is due to a combination of historical representation, current demographics, and biases in the data used to train image retrieval algorithms.
Here is a breakdown of the contributing factors:
Actual Demographics: In the United States, firefighting is an overwhelmingly male and predominantly White profession.
As of 2023, data shows that around 95.4% of the firefighter workforce were men.
Regarding race, approximately 79.1% of the firefighter workforce were White in 2023. This is higher than the percentage of White workers in the overall protective service occupations category.
While women and racial minorities are actively working as firefighters, the high percentage of White males in the profession means they naturally make up the majority of real-world images available."
"...or assuming that a woman can't possibly be involved in a particular career when you ask for a firefighter"
Most genAI these days goes the other way. Ask it for an image of a typical firefighter and it will return a black woman with one leg wearing a pride flag.
Anti-bias programming is still bias.
"The AFP and FBI stopped using AN0M because it produced more evidence than they could comfortably handle. The AFP, however, still wants access to encrypted communications and last year called for operators of encrypted messaging services to practice “accountable encryption” to help authorities quickly investigate messages felt to represent a threat to safety and security."
I'm sure "too much evidence" is the reason they stopped using it. And having "too much money" is the reason His Muskiness is firing up all those exploding rockets.
If they had such an excess of evidence then why do they feel the need to backdoor other secure messaging services? Wouldn't that also give them a ton of evidence?
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