Posts by The Dogs Meevonks

Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

Re: Explanation.

You mean getting stoned and making a stupid offer to buy a platform to stroke his ego and then realising it wasn't worth what he offered... but he made an ironclad agreement and has to honour it... so he strikes a deal with 3rd parties and authoritarian regimes to help fund it... to give them access to the data on users who may be critical of their regimes... and to set about destroying a platform that gives global reach and allows activists to mobilise and share in real time, data and information to organise and protest such regimes and fascist leaning figures.

No... aside from that... I can't think of anything else either.

The Musk simps are out in force on this one.

Between those who don't understand HOW unions work, and those that desperately simp for ole musky.... this comments section has been very painful to read today.

It's not usually this bad, but the wilfully ignorant have been out in force today. I suspect that as soon as anything muskrat related gets published a rallying cry goes out on shitter for the masses to assemble to defend his honour.

But it is fun seeing them downvoted to oblivion whilst complaining about the downvotes and how they're misunderstood or victimised, or that they're basically saying the same thing as the people they're arguing against (they're not and they can't understand why they're not)

Then seeing those same sad little simps desperately trying to downvote everyone who dares to disagree with their simping... and unhappy that they're simply outnumbered.... so they start slinging what they think are insults like 'left wing' or 'woke' or 'liberal' and all of the variations of things like that... You know... things they think are insults but are actually positive things that make others just better, kinder, more empathetic with the rest of society in general... and they can't understand that because all they know is greed, selfishness, taking and never giving... because that's what they worship, and that's why they're such sad little simps for billionaires.

It's ba-ack... UK watchdog publishes age verification proposals

F*ck the tories.... that is all.

HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems

I don't have an MS account for any of my windows 10 systems. I also use programs like OOUS10 to clear out and block their shite. Then there's classic shell to return a proper start menu.

So when I wanted to install a new HP printer a few years ago... you wouldn't believe the hoops I had to jump through to get drivers.

Epson didn't actually have them for download, instead they insisted you downloaded them from the MS store... which I couldn't, because no account and it's been disabled on my system.

It took hrs of searching and looking around before I finally found some... unlisted and hidden on HP's fucking site.

Then the printer didn't fucking work, so I sent it back and got an Epson instead... which installed in seconds.

I should have learned my lesson 25yrs ago when I got my first HP printer and it was shite.

Re: Just be thankful ...

So you need to know 'how to dismantle an intel nuc'

Meta sued by privacy group over pay up or click OK model

A hole... in the ground... luxury.

In my day we had to sleep under the stars with only our own urine for warmth.

The cold hard reality is this... if you only use it to keep in touch with friends, and those friends REFUSE to use any other means of communicating. then are they 'really' friends?

I deleted facebook 11 or 12 yrs ago for the 2nd time... the first was in 2008 after I was talked into using it 7-8 months earlier by work colleagues.

I do not miss it at all, it's a toxic wasteland of shit and is bad for your mental health.

For the next 7yrs... I had to put up with so called friends moaning 'but you're not on facebook' as justification for not making an effort to keep in touch.

So I delivered a final statement to them all... I will only make an effort with people who make an effort and demanding that I use facebook for your convenience is the opposite of making an effort.

Guess how many I've spoken with since 2019.

Zero...

They weren't friends... they were people I used to be friends with as teenagers and who drifted out of each others lives 25yrs ago... desperately trying to hang on to their youth in middle age.

I moved on, made new friends found people who were interested in the same things I am now rather than reminiscing over past shared experiences.

I highly recommend dropping anyone who refuses to make the effort to stay in touch if you choose not to participate in being the product of some billionaires fetish... every excuse they offer is based in their laziness and ignorance.

Plex gives fans a privacy complex after sharing viewing habits with friends by default

Emby is the same with TV shows + movies (jellyfin is a fork of emby after all)

What you need to do is go and look over on something like the tv database, to see if they've got the movie listed as a special. They usually do. So I create a Season 0 folder in the TV shows folder and rename the movie to S00Exx (with x being what the tvdb says). It should then scrape the metadata for it.

I don't have any issues with metadata scraping, you just have to ensure your file naming follows a certain rules.

I used to be involved with 'emby' back in the late 2000's when it started off as a plugin called video browser for Vista Media Centre... It later became Media Browser or 'MB' and later 'emby'

I left many years ago after butting heads with some others over the stupidity of certain design and direction choices.... in spite of being shouted down, screamed at and called all sorts of unpleasant things. Every single suggestion I made to streamline the UI and make the interface work better... was quietly implemented.

But I'd had enough of people who could program but had little idea about decent UI design... I like to think I influenced them enough to push it in the right direction... But there still seems to be an element that is stuck in the 'if it works on a touchscreen it's good enough for everything' mentality.

Even given my gripes with some of the idiots running the show over there at emby... I'd still choose it over anything else, because it's not harvesting your data, it's not sharing that data insidiously with everyone else and this is not the first time plex has introduced some nasty little tracking 'feature' into their software.

I've also got a lifetime sub because of that involvement and years of testing and developing it.

So my suggestion is ditch plex, give emby a try... heck, even give jellyfin a try (it's a fork of emby after all), it's lacking a lot of the features..

I have tried Plex... I switched to it and ran it alongside emby for about 6 months after I cut ties... there were many things to like about it back then. But... that was also when they decided to introduce their first attempt at tracking what users were watching and storing on their media servers... so I dropped it there and then.

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

True Story of how I'm an idiot

I was building some new systems a few years back during the early days of the pandemic.

I'd built one in Jan, and in April was retasking that build into my mediaserver (that was still on Windows 7 and AMD FX)

The new build was my personal gaming rig... and I'd decided to splash the cash a little as a treat.

That meant X570 motherboard and the 3800X CPU along with 64GB of DDR4 3600mhz, new case, new storage, new PSU... aside from the GPU... new everything.

So I'd got a 500GB Sabrent rocket PCI-E4.0 nvme drive for the OS. On my previous build, I had a 250GB WD Black (PCI-E3.0) for the OS.

I use anydesk to remote into my server.

Some of you might be able to figure out what happened next already.

After installing the OS and going back and forth to my home office for the next 6hrs or so whilst it updated windows 10 and I got programs and so forth installed... Remember I was retasking the other system as my mediaserver. So I was working on 2 systems at the same time... one remotely.

So at some point... I checked on storage space left on the OS drive on my new gaming rig.

Wait... that's only showing up as 250GB... I checked the packaging... it should be 500GB. It was late, I was tired and I was now annoyed.

I fired of a quick email to the seller, letting them know they shipped me the wrong drive and went to bed.

The following morning I boot up the system and notice it is actually 500GB.

Cue a WTF moment... before it dawns on me that I was looking at the drive on the server the night before, because I was logged in remotely.

Cue an Oh Shit moment as I realise I fired of an email that was a little blunt and passive aggressive.

Thankfully it was a weekend now... So I fired of a 2nd email, profusely apologising and explaining my stupidity. I had a reply on Monday... with them basically having a good chuckle at my expense. I even added the story to my review of the product.

It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, how much experience and knowledge you have... you can still pull a moment like that out of your arse. What matters is how you handle it... it doesn't hurt to have a bit of a chuckle at yourself from time to time.

OpenCart owner turns air blue after researcher discloses serious vuln

So... if I read this right...

So... the owner of a fuckwit company, with a history of fuckwit responses to serious vulns and flaws... is a... fuckwit?

Or have I missed the point?

What's really going on with Chrome's June crackdown on extensions – and why your ad blocker may or may not work

Re: This, coupled with YouTube's recent blitz

I worked for Halifax about 25yrs ago... and they tried that shit with me... you've got to have a Halifax account for your Halifax wages.

OK... so I then set up a standing order to transfer the entire amount less a few quid in rounding errors each month the day after payday... cut up the debit card and never once used it for anything else... those rounding errors, I'd leave in there for a little extra towards xmas. :)

I forgot about the account after I left for years, and then moved... when I remembered, I asked them to close it. They refused and said I had to go into a branch in person to do it. So I did... they refused because I didn't have ID that matched the address on file and I'd never bothered to remember things like pin numbers or passwords from an account I'd not used in 6-7yrs.

It's probably still sitting there 16yrs later.

Re: This, coupled with YouTube's recent blitz

Because companies like google, deliberately broke google apps/sites from working within firefox and other browsers... to try and force (con) people into using it.

I had to use chrome about 10yrs ago just to be able to use hangouts... Because they broke it with firefox. Joke was on them though... I used chrome only to log into the old Google+ account so I could access hangouts with my friends. and kept using firefox for everything else.

Then there was sky, who only allowed to use the sky go site with IE/Edge because they only allowed silverlight to watch anything.

Utter fuckery from both companies... and my response was simple... find alternate ways to access the content I want... be it legit or not.

Re: Time to unleash AI on adverts?

How about forgetting that your headphones auto connect to devices when turned on... and instead of connecting to your TV in your bedroom when you are laid up in bed recovering from surgery... it connected to your partners device... who was watching some weird Korean soap they've become addicted to... and you're trying to figure out why an episode of The Expanse is in Korean and the settings say it's already in English.

Yeah... took me a good 5-10 mins to figure that one out in my drug induced haze of post operative bliss.... I don't miss the discomfort... but I do miss the bliss. :)

Ex-IBM sales veteran sues for access to health benefits

Re: The answer is very simple - except it isn't

Then I'd argue that the punishment doesn't exceed the benefit... in savings or profits. They'll only change from greed over people when forced to... Maybe making the directors/board/shareholders culpable with criminal charges and mandatory minimum sentences.

I'm not an expert obviously... but it's the only way to force them to stop... wallet or liberty... preferably both. :)

The answer is very simple

All capitalist companies care about is money... So the answer is simple. You make the punishment for breaking laws/regs such as making employee benefits unreasonable, or selling consumer products that aren't fit for purpose.. so astronomically high that it is no longer in a corporations interests to violate them.

Make the default punishment, 10x the saving. You deny 3000 people, 10,000 in their benefit... that's not 30 million they have to pay out... it's 300 million.

Hitting them in the bottom line is the only thing they will understand and it's the only way they will ever make changes and stop these devious anti employer and anti consumer practices.

Google dragged to UK watchdog over Chrome's upcoming IP address cloaking

Here's how many adverts I watch.

Zero... it's zero, it's been zero for years, it will always be zero as long as I have control over what I'm looking at.

Broadcast TV... time shifting. I will pause live TV for 10-15 mins so that I can skip through the adverts, or I simply record and watch later so I can do the same thing.

Online - I've been quite vocal about my use of ad/script/cookie blockers, forcing https everywhere and using a VPN 24/7 even though it means places might become unavailable to me. The BBC block you if you have a VPN now, as do Netflix once more... and by block, I mean... can't even load the site if connected.

Print - LOL... who buys print anymore?

This is the consequence of a toxic advertising industry... I will NEVER stop blocking them, making whatever data they can collect as worthless as possible.

Next up... I'm gonna put together a pihole I think, was toying with the idea of getting one to run home assistant for my solar/battery system to maximise charging cycles at cheap rates. So maybe I can do both on the same raspPi

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Re: So nobody did economics in school?

You have utterly failed to grasp the actual problem. If you can't even see what the problem is, then any solution you claim to offer is worthless and can be ignored by anyone and everyone who does understand the problem.

Re: So nobody did economics in school?

Do you work in the ad industry or something... because you're fawning over their bullshit like you get paid too.

If a site wants to block me for daring to use plugins that help protect my privacy from their tracking and data collection by multiple 3rd parties... I'll go somewhere else for the information I'm looking for. I don't OWE them jack shit. They have NO entitlement to invade my privacy EVER.

They created this clusterfuck, they decided to declare war to try and force their insidious ads onto everyone... and if it's a war... anything goes... everything is a legitimate target (according to the media and western backed terrorist states)

So lets fuck their shit up

Re: Chrome

Delayed highlights with 5th rate presenters hours after the results are already known?

No thanks.

Re: Nail, meet head!

Amazon are taking issue with that... pay for our service... thanks, but now we're going to remove the ability for you to see 'only' what is free to you so we can show you lots of stuff we'd like you to pay extra for.

Oh and then in 2024, we're also going to show you ads on the service you paid for that contained no ads... but we'll happily not show you ads if you pay us again as an optional extra.

The ad industry is toxic... it needs to be nuked from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

If amazon/netflix start showing me ads or asking for extra to keep them away... I'll have to dig out my old hat with a skull and crossbones on it.

Re: Chrome

As a firefox user since it's inception... I have never once experienced this in... what... 20yrs now. Sure it could use a lot of resources, but chrome was even worse for multitab users like myself (30-40 open on avg across 3 windows)

What I did see happen multiple times... were sites being deliberately broken by companies so that only a specific browser would work... guess what company did that the most? Go on... take a wild guess?

A shout out (in addition to google for this practice) was Sky in the UK, who disallowed their sky go service from working on anything except IE/Edge because they only allowed the use of silverlight... admittedly this was years ago now, and I only discovered it after I cancelled sky over their pricing bullshit and the fact they lied about the F1 and placed it behind a paywall after they 'upgraded' me for free to a much better service... so as I was within the first 2 weeks of the new deal... I cancelled it and my entire service, switching phone and broadband away too.

So I started using my folks sky account to watch the F1 via sky go... until they pulled the same bullshit with my folks a couple of years later.

Not watched the F1 since... about 5yrs and counting now... and ya know what. I don't actually miss it. 40yrs of watching since I was a little kid, going to races as far back as the last one at Brands Hatch in 86 as a 6yr old. I lived just 10 miles from Silverstone and went there a lot until even that got priced out of my range.

Ad blockers exist... because...

The ad industry is ultimately toxic and vile. The 'good' advertisers don't survive and no longer exist.

If the ad industry hadn't resorted to ever increasing, dirty, underhand, manipulative, devious, illegal ways of forcing them upon you, tracking your every move, building data files on every single person they can... then ad blockers simply wouldn't need to exist.

That's not changed... the industry has only become worse.

So anything any user does to protect themselves and their privacy... is not only acceptable, it's essential that everyone does it.

But an adblocker isn't enough, you need to ditch chromium browsers, use script, tracking and cookie blockers, containers to sandbox sites and a VPN to mask your location and prevent ISP spying. Throw in a new DNS provider whilst you're at it.

I keep anything related to meta, blocked at every possible turn, what does get through is isolated from everything else.. Google is also isolated in it's own container and they do work. I remain signed in for YT/Maps/Calendar/Sheets... but should I accidentally open a YT link outside of said container... it doesn't know who I am.

Ebay/Amazon... also sandboxed, my banking also has it's own container and is isolated from cross tab spying.

That will never change... the ad industry (and the related anti-social media sites that grew out of it) is forever toxic... it will never and should never be trusted... even on el-reg. They created this monstoer and have to reap the consequences of their own actions... Nuke em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

tl:dr fuck all advertisers

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

Got stung this year by Sky arseholes

Moved home in Sept 2022, had to sign up for a new contract for phone/broadband with sky because combining 2 homes into one... supposed to be £40/m for 18 months.

6 months later... it's £48... could have cancelled by rejecting the price rise but she who hates change couldn't be bothered.

So now everything is in my name now... once that 18 months is up... sky are getting told where to shove it... especially as the service is utter garbage. 63mb/s speeds for the first few months... now 43mb/s... but is above the min 39mb/s guaranteed speed... so it's a big fuck you from them.

They refuse to accept the dozens of speed test results I've done both on speedtest and fast.com proving real world speeds are barely 31mb/s

Can't wait until FTTH arrives in my street... sadly, that's supposed to be around 2025 at the earliest because I live on the edge of a small town... whilst villages just 1/2m up the road are getting gigabit speeds... I'm stuck with having to throttle my downloads to avoid swamping all the bandwidth just by grabbing steam updates... and the dropouts... every few minutes... 10-30s data pauses for web traffic.

I can't be sure... but it's a bit like I caught virgin doing years ago... throttle traffic for anyone who dares to use a VPN... because turn it off and the pauses go away.

Sadly... I only knew virgin were doing it because I caught one of their staff in a few lies. Sky remain tight lipped on the reasons... and refuse to admit anything or even look into the 33% drop in speeds.

So fuck em... drop em as soon as I can.

Might go back to Zen, at least they fix shit when it breaks and refund/credit customers for their screw ups... they admitted that my old service had been degrading for 11 months until was below min speeds... just never bothered doing anything about it. Ended up with 6 months free in the last 18 months of my service.

Meta's ad-free scheme dares you to buy your privacy back, one euro at a time

Re: $9.99/$12.99 a month?

Last time I saw anything related to the value of a users data, it was priced higher than a barrel of oil... that's to each advertiser... everything they hold on 2 billion or so people valued at about $100 for each user... as oil is about $90 a barrel at the moment

I have no idea if it's worth as much now... I've not bothered looking into it further.

Re: I thought this was an Onion article

No, it's more of a 'forum' and those have been about for decades more than social media... so for me at least they're not part of the toxic entity that has become 'anti-social media'

Although... there are a few reg commentards that do their best to be toxic wankers.... but I'll mention no names. :)

I thought this was an Onion article

Saw something about this a day or two ago... and my first thought was that it was an onion argument and/or a hoax as it's done the rounds many times over the years... I can remember fake posts/stories about (insert social media site here) was going to start charging you to use it going back 10yrs or more.

Doesn't bother me at all... I deleted FB about 12yrs ago, deleted twatter about 5-6yrs ago. I do everything I can to block their ads/trackers/scripts (same with others)... I might not get it all, but I make what they do get as useless as possible.

I'm happy that my entire social media presence is on mastodon, it's peaceful, friendly and inclusive and so far... without the hate because when you get attempts by far right groups to 'infiltrate' with their own 'instance'... they just get defederated by all of the others. It's quite funny to watch.

Tesla goons will buy anything – including these $150 beers

Re: consider branding yourself with a Tesla Branding Iron

Speaking of the multiverse... in one of them... just the one mind you... not 2... not 3... just the ONE!!!.

Ole muskrat isn't a complete and utter narcissistic, fascist leaning, bigoted piece of shite.

Meta Quest 3 is a virtual reality of repair insanity

If anyone has seen a picture of it... I saw a bright orange/white one that looked like it should be on one of those 'is it cake' shows... a cross between a handbag and a character from 'one of us'

Oh look it's an overpriced niche within a niche within a niche product that has built in planned obsolescence... What a surprise... said nobody.

Oh, how I wish there was a Phillip J Fry 'shocked' icon.

Intel offers $179 Arc A580 GPU to gamers on a budget

I'd say I've spent more on PC hardware since 2019 that I had in the previous 10yrs combined. I gave up work in 2010 to help care for my dad, so everything was built using last gen gear and often second hand... I had a Phenom II 955BE that was a bit of a beast as it had the C2 stepping and was a very good overclocker. Paired that with a couple of used Radeon 5770's in Xfire for a pretyt decent gaming system for 2009-2010.

Sadly made the mistake of going with AMD FX for the next one... and we all know how bad those chips were... suffered on that platform until 2019.

I'm on version 3.1 of the mediaserver... because it used to have a 2600X (3800X now) and an RX580 GPU (now a RX550) and I'm considering going for an igpu like a 5600G and dropping the GPU entirely... Because I could then split the 2 main PCI-E slots into x8 each and get some NVME add in cards... 4x4TB nvme on each one would give me 32TB of solid state storage and allow to dump my 5 smallest HDD's a 4tb and four 6tb. Leaving me with the three 14TB.

I've still got a drawer full of HDD's... even the 2 original 1.5TB for server V1.0 and they still work and were only retired from my mums system 3 years ago after a solid 10yrs of use. M y oldest HDD has over 76000hrs on it and the 6TB ones are in the 45000 range.

Ironically... E-sports are the games that don't need high end stuff and are designed to run very well on low end hardware... because that's where they make most of their sales... In the poor and gullible end of the market where they can be more easily conned into paying for extras like outfits and keeping up with player transfers.

Re: A good option if you're running modern games, only Linux based open source OS, and not VR

FSR 2.1 is excellent, I use it anywhere I can on my 6900XT and can't see any issues at all. Where FSR 2.1 isn't available, or in older games without FSR, I use RSR to upscale 1080 to 1440p and the performance I'm getting is amazing without any graphical glitches that I can see on a 165hz panel.

Some games I don't need to use it at all because they're so well optimized.. like Doom Eternal which is maxing out my panel anyway.

AAA games like the fast travel simulator 'Starfield' is giving me lows of 70fps in intensive areas and 170fps in less intensive ones. CyberPunk 2077 with Phantom Liberty is giving me well over 120fps and all games are on the max settings possible.

As for ray tracing... I honestly couldn't give a shit about it. It offers no advantage to gameplay at all, you barely notice the visual improvements in most games unless you like to stand around admiring the scenery instead of... actually playing games. So nvidias advantage in that area is worthless for me and certainly not worth paying the nvidia tax just because they're a year ahead that AMD and 2yrs ahead of intel with the tech.

This is the way.

My last few progressions have gone like this.

8yr old AM3+ FX8350 CPU platform with 16GB DDR3 ram, upgraded to 5700XT GPU in 2018

2019, new AM4 2600X build with 32GB 3200mhz DDR4 ram, new case and M.2 storage.

April 2020, repurposed that build to upgrade old mediaserver (also on old 8yr old AM3+ FX platform, added RX550 GPU), and built AM4 X570, 3800X, 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz, lots of SSD and NVME storage, 850W PSU and used the RX5700XT. Did go for an expensive case this time rather than budget one... and added in some rgb for the first time in a build.

2nd half of 2022, upgraded CPU to 5800X3D and GPU to 6900XT, sold 5700XT to friend so GPU cost was only £530, CPU was on sale and cost £260.

2023, replaced 3TB HDD with 4TB SSD

2024... Will replace final HDD in main system with an SSD.

As for the mediaserver... It's all HDD's aside from the OS drive and until you can get a 10TB SSD for the same price as a HDD, will remain so. I might replace the oldest 4TB drive (currently on about 76000hrs uptime) with another 14TB. But there isn't a drive in the system that has less than 20000hrs uptime on it now.

I consider myself on the high side of PC expenditure as over the last 4yrs I've probably spent in the region of £5000 when you add in extras like a new 32" 165hz HDR monitor, mechanical keyboard, mouse and a very expensive chair. But that's 2 full systems, and a lot of high capacity HDD storage bought here and there over the last 6-7yrs

But no rebuilds for at least 2 or 3 years... the mediaserver now runs the 3800X, the 2600X was gifted to a friend who's computer was built back in 2015 and desperately needs a new one. I specc'd out his new build as he can re-use a few parts at £340 (Case/MB/Ram/PSU/Cooling/NVME)

99% of gamers... aren't techies, the majority of them play on consoles these days.

So the majority of buyers... just want something to play their fave games at the lowest price. because their may not have a huge amount of disposable income, or... and I know this may be a shock to you... Don't fucking care about having the biggest baddest most expensive gaming kit around.

AMD Still on Top in the Budget to Mid range, with Intel in a firm 2nd

With nVidia having utterly lost the plot, still thinking there's a shortage and crypto boom going on with their overpriced garbage that with the very top tier aside...is no better or even worse than the previous gen... because they slid everything up the scale a couple of notches and raised the prices.

AMD currently have the best price to performance cards in the mid range by a huge margin. But intel ARC with the huge price cuts they've been seeing, and the huge improvements with regular driver releases... are taking over the 2nd spot.

Obviously... if you don't care about value for money, and only care about perceived crowns and the shiny badge affixed to a product... then you'll still buy nvidia anyway... I mean, people still buy BMW, Audi & Tesla inspite of them being seen as the laughing stock of the car world.

I'm still amazed that AMD's 6700-6800 range cards are competing up there in the low mid to budget ranges thanks to constant driver improvements over the last couple of years... My 6900XT has been kicking arse in modern AAA games still... and I see no reason to upgrade it or my 5800X3D system for at least 2-3 more years. Probably wait and see if AMD bring AM6 in 2025 or 2026 or keep AM5 going for a further year or two.

Re: nothing says "I'm being financially responsible" quite like splurging on a graphics card

'c#nt' is one of them 'c#nt' ? Please tell me one of them is 'c#nt'

No

Cucking Funt then... am I close?

Astronomers spot collision between two exoplanets, both feared vaporized

<deities brother> Did you look behind the fridge, it's always behind the fridge.

New information physics theory is evidence 'we're living in a simulation,' says author

Re: Problem of evil?

You've never played 'the sims' it's all about the suffering... I would create a lothario who sleep with every single woman in the neighbourhood, get them all to come and live in my giant house and watch the fallout as they constantly catch me cheating on them with each other.

Then if one of them looks like they're going to leave... get them to go for a swim and remove the ladder... or wait for a cooking fire and remove the doors.

I think I might be a satan bot.

Re: how much it would take to simulate the human brain or, for that matter, 7 billion human brains

I take issue with the reasoning that there are 7 billion simulated brains... I'd put the number a lot lower... a few thousand perhaps... a million at best.

The rest are just poorly programmed AI NPC's with a very limited capacity for reasoning and response. Which does explain a lot of the world right now... They're the chatgpt of the simulation, tell it a lie often enough and they will spout it to everyone else as fact.

An advanced race is playing 'First Life'

There's an old early 2000's reference for you... people who invested heavily in the game 2nd life now realising they're in the life simulation game called First Life.

My user is obviously a teenager based on some of the crap it gets me to spew forth from my face hole... the puerile, meme laden, pop culture laced conversations as a 44yr old has no business being that 'with it' as the young people no longer call it... and you'll be 'with it' too one day, but by then what's it will be something different and you'll feel old whilst spouting 15yr old drivel that amuses them.

At the end of the day, we are all just simulated meat sacks with an expiration date.

Fingers crossed my next user creates a more well rounded character.

Forcing Apple to allow third-party app stores isn't enough

Re: It's not whether the App Store is good or bad...

Ah that old chestnut... It's free at the point of delivery. Every single working age person pays towards it's funding... a tiny fraction of their income. A few % a year.

Or

Pay thousands for coverage for you and your family each month and if you dare to get sick, you'll have to pay thousands more and we might just decide not to pay for your treatment anyway because we just this second decided it's not covered... so here's your 60000 bill for a tetanus shot, aspirin and a plaster of which you are now liable for 98% of it. Have the aspirin on us... what's that you've got a headache now... oh, you'll be needing some aspirin then... That's be another 12000 please.

But you'd rather have the second one than the first... because SOCIALISM BAD

AMD graphics card users report gremlins with Windows 11

Re: I have an issue - Not sure it's MS though

I think it's related to certain websites and brave. Because I've not used brave today at all and not had the problem... But I have 3 Firefox windows open as usual with 29 tabs.

I have an issue - Not sure it's MS though

I updated my 6900XT to 23.9.3 a few days ago... since then I've been having desktop woes.

At some random point, switching windows from one to another... be it one firefox instance to another window or to brave... or running a YT video on one and then trying to read something on another... causes the whole system to hang (but audio still plays) for a random amount of time between 5-30 seconds. Sometimes it just hangs the once, other times it repeatedly hangs, un-hangs for a split second and hangs again, repeating this process for a few mins at times.

It only started after the driver update... The last OS updates were a few weeks ago and I'm still on W10.

Strangely... it's not affecting any games at all. Just the desktop and it's getting infuriating.

You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription

Re: Spelling correction?

Badum Tish!!!

The IOT is ALWAYS a scam

Everything you buy that's 'connected' to the internet as a way to make things so much more convenient for the sucker... sorry... consumer. Is always a scam. It's classic drug dealer level stuff... offer a taster and then yank the rug out from under them and demand more money once they're invested in it.

You'd be surprised at how many people will pony up the subs for this, some people don't like to admit they've been scammed. They want to think they've made a good purchase, and what's another few dollars a month on top of the dozens of other few dollars for all of the other 'excellent' purchases you've made over the years.

People keep getting conned into believing that everything they used to be able to do in a simple browser window, now requires it's own app, it's own walled garden and it's own subscription fee.

There's a sucker born every minute... and they'll keep convincing themselves they're smart and make good choices and boasting about how 'convenient' their choice makes things... whilst not informing people of the true cost... because then they'd risk being laughed at by people with more than a handful of brain cells.

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

Re: Social media is overrated

You've lost the plot with that last statement.

What really happened was that certain media outlets started pushing twitter as more important than it really was... mainly in the USA and that then spread. As if it was the voice of the majority, rather than a rancid cesspit of bullshit and vapid thinking.... which lets face it, was the actual majority of it (only a tiny fraction of it posted relevant and interesting things)... people started acting as if jumping on a hashtag trend was important, had value and meaning... and some brands started listening to it, giving it importance, bowing down to that minority as if they had actual power.

There are closing in on 8 billion people on the planet... at it's peak, there were around 400million using twitter, over 2 billion using facebook/insta/snap and so forth... I've not seen any accurate numbers for twitter recently. But advertisers have left, millions of users have left and probably been replaced by bots and right wing, christofascist consipiracy fuckwits.

Masto has seen a huge rise in numbers, millions of new accounts joined in the last 12 months.. thousands joining every day.

You still get those crying out that mastodon isn't worth it, there's no engagement and crap like that... that's because those people are idiots or lazy who shitpost links for likes and expect everyone else to do their work for them... they think because of places like facebook/twitter/insta and so forth... that all they need to do is shitpost some garbage and millions of people will see it and hundreds/thousands will share it for them.

That's not how actual social media works... it requires effort, it requires interaction and engagement with others... the lazy and the stupid will ignore it because they can't be bothered to make that effort... and that's great for the rest of us... because we won't see their garbage pushed into our feeds by some algorithm and people won't respond to (and will soon stop) those who fail to interact and engage with everyone else.

Re: Bluesky

bluesky is just twitter from almost 20yrs ago... it'll go exactly the same way.

Re: The fly in the ointment...

No... it's because mastodon doesn't have a central server or database for everyone... it's hundreds or thousands of individually run 'instances' that talk to each other.

Facebook tried to setup an instance and there was massive discussion amongst instance admins over a pre-emptive blocking of it due to their track record of 'infiltrating' networks like this, making changes to the open source code that favours their plans, attempt to become the largest userbase on the network, and make it difficult for other instances to operate/access the network if they don't play by their rules... eventually destroying the network in their favour. It's happened before and it's a long term goal/plan of theirs.