First question ...
...why the fuck do you need a Bing App for your fscking wallpaper ?
Can we please shift to another timeline, this one is clearly broken ....
Posts by Jeroen Braamhaar
216 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Oct 2007
Bing Wallpaper app opens Harry Potter's chamber of ads
Anthropic, now atop the AI bubble, files for its IPO
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 08:47 GMT 
Let that bubble burst!
I realize this isn't going to be a very popular post; downvote if you want but please hear me out. I'm in neither the "burn it now" nor "machine salvation" camp, nor do I want to 'convert' people ...I just would like people to understand and have a discussion instead of a sermon.
Let'em burn. To the ground. All of them.
Maybe we can sift through their ashes and find some specific applications where it will be useful. I don't think it'll go away entirely, I can certainly see places wher it would be useful ... on a much smaller, more limited scale - once wiser and cooler heads get together and find a way forward that doesn't run roughshod over society. We really need to find a wayu out of the data issue before either governments or other corporations get involved, because that's not going to end well for ANYONE.
While I think the tech overall is interesting, the hype slicksters, marketing bloviators and insufficiently sceptical commentators have blown it up way past anything feasible with current knowledge and computing ability.
At the core it's not "intelligence" but (pretty brute force) pattern matching ... and despite looking/feeling intelligent it's _not_, and it's not that terribly hard to hit edge cases or run headfirst into training data limits. And unlike humans, these systems cannot assume, invent or pull disparate associations together very well. (There is research underway to try to solve this, but it's still pretty early)
The term for it is "solution space" (How much room, and whether or not a model can 'solve' a given input for the data is has available) and it can be surprisingly small. Of course you can compensate for that by throwing more data and compute at it - which is exactly the solution now, but that stops being feasible fairly quickly.
The best example I can give of this:
Invent a mythical creature. If you go to an artist,-even a novice one- you can describe it and from that description, the artist can infer what it is you want and render it into a drawing.
But a model can't do that. You can prompt it, you can decompose it into pieces and features, but if it has no associated "knowledge cluster" that covers those concepts, you'll get nothing - or at best some kind of chimeric nonsense instead. More powerful models might do a slightly better job of it, but still run into the same problem.
Also casual fact: democratization is already well underway. A lot of models can be run on consumer grade hardware already, and perform pretty well within that environment.
LLM's might find a place as specific knowledge field query systems .. once you accept its limitations and you learn to shape questions, it's a good way to learn or synthesize/gain knowledge.
Text to image/image to image has a lot of potential as well -- for novice artists as a structural aid (via ControlNet), for experienced people as infill or emergent decoration.
Disclaimer: Yes I've worked with both .. and come to realize very quickly both are powerful tools - and all powerful tools carry an abuse risk, especially when they have such a low barrier to entry - but what's struck me the most is how little literacy there is surrounding all of it. A lot of what I read is almost caricaturial; and a lot of possibility assumptions are either on or beyond the edge of capability.
I apologize for a bit of a rambly post, I originally was just going to say one thing then realized I had to James Burke Connections style provide better context for people.;-)
Take care all,
Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer
Friday 8th May 2026 10:00 GMT 
The ultimate comeuppance ....
... would be the grassroots AI community managing to jailbreak the model and enabling it to run entirely divorced and isolated from Google itself. Even better if they figured out how to (re)train it or interface it with other (existing) data. At that point, there's a wonderful poetic justice in Google trying to make people more dependent ... and giving people more independence instead.
PrismML debuts energy-sipping 1-bit LLM in bid to free AI from the cloud
Saturday 4th April 2026 20:19 GMT
Re: everyone wins when slop machines get cheaper
You can draw the parallels to manufacturing:
Early manufacturing had huge machines with low efficiency and limited usability.
Over time, machines got better, more versatile .. and then then CNC revolution happened.
Right now you can already get CNC machines at the home level now (micro mill/lathe), to say nothing of how 3d printing has revolutionized DIY.
It's likely that eventually this will happen to LLM's as well.
Will it be a better world ? I have no clue. I can't (and won't) judge -- but it'll be interesting to watch.
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Open source's new mission: Rebuild a continent's tech stack
Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround
Commodore Amiga turns 40, headlines UK exhibition
If you're forced to use Windows 11, here's how to steal some of your time back
Tuesday 22nd July 2025 07:01 GMT
I reluctantly migrated this week. Not because I wanted to, but to at least do it on my time and terms rather than to find out I have to rush through anything.
To keep W11 livable I used:
- Win11Debloat (get rid of all the crapware)
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
- ExplorerPatcher (fixes the taskbar so you can actually move it to where you want, rather than where M$ tell you to)
https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/
Do I want to move to Linux ? Yes, but I just lack the smarts and the will at the moment. Forgive me, I am weak.
WinAmp's woes will pass, but its wonders will be here forever
Sunday 20th October 2024 13:44 GMT 
Oddly perhaps ...
... but I still am using WinAMP as my media player of choice. Classic skins somehow broke earlier this year from one day to the next (playlist window stopped opening), but the modern skin packages still function fine.
I've tried some of the modern fork/offshoots but none of them managed to capture the ease of use or the convenience of the original - so here's a toast to WinAMP.
Cheers mate, carry on and stay llama ass whoopin' awesome
Microsoft closes Windows 11 upgrade loophole in latest Insider build
Supreme Court won't stop Biden leaning on social media giants to tackle disinfo
Thursday 27th June 2024 07:03 GMT
Just as America and their allies (and a whole lot of special interest groups) are leveraging the same [social] media to inflame hatred of those "enemies" (or create entirely new enemies), relying on the average social media user being too stupid/lazy to think for themselves, blindly believe what they're being told and launch 'mostly peaceful protests/occupations' "for [insert cause here] justice" among other things ?
Now that I have your attention with that little snark (for which I'm only a little bit sorry) I feel the the need to point this out:
It's a VERY slippery slope between disinformation and dissent, and the dumber you keep/make people, the further you can shift that line without anyone realizing.
Do you want to fight disinfo/misinfo ? Give people perspective and encourage/teach them to critically think FOR THEMSELVES.
Don't try to 'control the narrative' and bombard people with the one side you prefer and exhort people to 'trust the experts' while discrediting/removing the other side.
And that requires access to information on ALL sides of ANY argument; political, economical, scientific, religious, societal, ideological - you name it.
I don't think anyone realize this is still censorship, albeit in a very alluring guise for a noble (corrupted) cause, and effectively, doing this means "the West" has ALREADY lost, emplyojng the same tactics we criticize the nations we call 'enemies' for.
I was going to post this anonymously, knowing it's a pretty spicy/contrarian post most will probably downvote to hell.
But please, before you do: think -for yourself- on what I've said and what it implies.
I have, and that's why I'm posting this under my own name.
Apple confirms iPadOS will fall under its Alternative Business Terms in the EU
DEF CON is canceled! No, really this time – but the show will go on
Right to repair advocates have a new opponent: Scientologists
EU antitrust team closer to full-blown Microsoft probe, say sources
Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget
What if someone mixed The Sims with ChatGPT bots? It would look like this
Unlucky for some: Meta chops 13% of global workforce
Luxury smartphone brand returns with $41,500 device
The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups
Big Tech revenues under threat from EU law proposals
Deere & Co won't give out software and data needed for repairs, watchdog told
Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids
Things that are not PogChamp: Amazon's Twitch has its source code, streamer payout data leaked
Windows 11 in detail: Incremental upgrade spoilt by onerous system requirements and usability mis-steps
Latest Windows 11 Preview a well-rounded update – literally
IBM, Red Hat face copyright, antitrust lawsuit from SCO Group successor Xinuos
Robots that take out your garbage? Oh What A Feeling, says Toyota as it opens its very own smart city
Beagleboard peeps tease dual-core 64-bit RISC-V computer with GPU, AI acceleration, more for $119
'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad
Trello! It is me... you locked the door? User warns of single sign-on risk after barring self from own account
Microsoft picks a side, aims to make the business 'carbon-negative' by 2030
I have no mouth and I must scream: You can add audio to wobbles in latest Windows 10 patch
The April 2018 Update is so 1803, snort Windows 10 faithful as more settle down in 1903 town
Don't press the red b-... Windows Insiders' rings hit by surprise Microsoft emission
Furious Apple revokes Facebook's enty app cert after Zuck's crew abused it to slurp private data
Total Inability To Support User Phones: O2 fries, burning data for 32 million Brits
LastPass? More like lost pass. Or where the fsck has it gone pass. Five-hour outage drives netizens bonkers
Wednesday 21st November 2018 08:49 GMT
Moral of the story:
Put nothing in "the cloud"
- that you don't have a certified, current and regularly checked, usable and updated (local) backup of.
- that is too important to lose (for whatever reason)
- that you must have access to at critical moments.
Completely
Lost
Our
Unmissable
Data
;-)
Google vows to take claims of sexual assault, harassment seriously, just like privacy
UK.gov to roll out voter ID trials in 2019 local elections
Some of you really don't want Windows 10's April 2018 update on your rigs
Friday 27th July 2018 12:19 GMT
Re: Why so traumatic?
Because MS insists on shoveling features they haven't fully tested (if at all) at their hapless victims (otherwise known as "users") in a desperate bid to prove their OS is ready for primetime.
And rather than STOP and fix the mess they made last update (or any of the previous ones), they happily/blissfully move on to the new flavor of the day insisting that this time, they'll get it right!
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results ... making the institutional mental health of the Microsoft edifice questionable at best, mythical at worst. Take your pick.