Posts by The Dogs Meevonks

Users claimed they'd never seen a spell checker and panicked at the sight of red squiggles

Re: Don't check that, check this

When you live that close to an airport, it's easy to filter out the noise.

Re: "this is just how MS Word works"

I cut my teeth on Word Perfect from around 92 to mid 90's... Must have been about 12-13yrs old the first time I used it... On an old Olivetti 386 PC with Windows 3.1 at the local youth club where we were making a little local magazine... But mostly, that was a an excuse to sneak in at all hours and play games like the original X-Wing that we'd bought to install. :)

Re: Don't check that, check this

WHOOSH!!!

MPs want social media treated more like unsafe toys than harmless apps

I'm getting tired of suggesting this simple change to all social media... Class them as publishers, not conduits. Make them liable for everything they allow to be published on their platforms... they own everything about their own sites and yet try to hide behind the delusional reasoning that each individual must be held accountable for what they allow them to post on their platforms instead of them.

They have the means to control it, they've proven time and time again that they can and will remove content... they choose not to because they profit from the hate, the bigotry, the lies, the scams; crimes and misinformation spread on the platforms they have 100% control over.

It really could be that fucking simple... they're responsible, and they're liable... and the second it starts costing them money to pay the fines for allowing lies, hate and scams on their platforms... they'll do something about it.

Because that's the only thing they understand... money. You make it impossible for them to operate and profit from allowing hate, bile and scammers to operate on their platforms.

It's game over for Copilot on Xbox

Re: Copilot on Xbox -- for What?

I thought the musk strategy was just 'be a c*nt'

Re: Well done Microsoft

I think they deserve the praise for removing it, and I would loudly say 'thank you' in between the thwacks from the cricket bat... that misses both of their legs.

AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition tested: Gratuitous overkill with a price to match

Re: An $899 CPU? In this economy?

I think if we all chip in, we can afford a few guillotines

just for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDqP7kcr-sc

Re: An $899 CPU? In this economy?

this is an active attempt to eliminate the home PC market... they want to sell you some expensive proprietary box that connects to all of these data centres they're not actually building for an ever increasing monthly fee... It's all part of the surveillance state... all you data belong to them, all your jobs are eliminated by the AI in those same invisible data centres.

Quite how they imagine people will be able to pay for those exorbitant subscription fess when no one has a job... seems to have eluded them. But so long as in the next quarter... line goes right and up... they don't care... or care to look beyond that.

I'm at the point where I don;t care if it causes a worldwide financial crash... I want to see these evil muthafuckas wiped out.

Re: The CPU for me..

My 5800X3D still kicks some serious gaming bottom... and until the CPU becomes a bottleneck, there's no need to upgrade... and given the state and expense of building a new system anyway... there's no chance of a new system anyway... because I won't play their games and buy overpriced parts... ever.

My 6900XT GPU will be upgraded before the CPU becomes a bottleneck... but until I can get a decent used GPU with a 50% performance boost at a bargain price... it'll have to do.

It's not like I bother with 99% of modern games anyway.... I've not bought a new game in about 2yrs... I've tried a few and wasn't impressed... Maybe at 46... I just prefer to replay the games I have already over badly optimised, overpriced crap masquerading as AAA.

perhaps all of this ram shortage stuff... will make them start optimising software better so it can actually run on the GPU with less ram they'll be making for the next few years... because we won't be getting any sub $1000 cards with more than 8GB again.

You can currently get a 9800X3D cpu for under £370 in the UK right now... and under current conversion rates, the $899 price tag is £666 (how appropriate)

The charts I've seen from independent reviewers, do not show a 90-100% improvement over the 9800X3D, so the price is just greed plain and simple... looking to hook a few rich whales who will pay any price for the 'status' of having the newest, latest and greatest 'shiny'.

For anyone else with a brain and common sense... sit back in peace, knowing that you're not an idiot.

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out

Re: WTF?

Additional... the only problem that does exist that they want to solve is wages... they want to remove the need to pay anyone a wage... Quite how they imagine people with no ability to work will be able to pay for the services they want to create... seems to elude their tiny little minds.

Re: WTF?

They're desperately trying to invent solutions to problems that don't exist based around one single idea 'laziness & convenience' the idea that everyone will use them because they're too lazy and care more about their own convenience.

Sadly... that actually works for a lot of the gullible and easily led people... This forum is a microcosm of people who know and understand them better.

My carpenter... thinks he's a musician because he writes a few words for lyrics and tells grok to create a song in the style (insert band/singer name here)... He's so happy about his creations and wants to play them for me.. they're utter garbage... I'm sat there nodding and smiling whilst thinking... well... that's just a poor job at imitating 'Yello' with bad lyrics.

That's the kind of people we're up against if we want generative AI to fuck the hell off.

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

Re: systemd-free distros

My DOB... why of course... it's 01/01/01... and before y2k it was also 01/01/01

Re: systemd-free distros

If the age verification is built into the OS... then companies won't have to implement it themselves... and it's being funded behind the scenes by companies like meta who are spending tens of millions on lobbying groups.

If they don;t have to build it into their products, they can continue to push their vitriolic products on kids and damage their mental health whilst getting them addicted to the hate they push at them... ya know... like all drug dealers do.

Elon Musk wants to build 50 times more chips than the world currently produces, using 'new physics'

Re: Peak Musk...

More like Waterworld and Mad Max

Re: Peak Musk...

Would you like some toast... but first a word from our sponsor... CrumpetClub™... For just £99.99 dollarpounds a month you will receive a weekly supply of bready products designed specially for your talkie toaster™.

Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor

Re: Specificity

A USA gallon is 3.8lts whilst in the UK it's 4.5lts.

It's all fucked...

I have 2 or 3 lattes a day, have done for about the last 15yrs. Time for number 2 I think.... That's number 2... not A number 2... Coffee number 1 took care of that.

Your next car might need 300 GB of RAM, and so will autonomous robots

Re: 300GB of RAM

2008 Honda Accord EX here... sailed through it's last MOT too... as it does every year.

Re: I wish I could have a hybrid of this idea

I used to own Mazda MX6's, which the probe was based on... a much better looking and more reliable car than the Probe. Was heavily involved with the scene and owners clubs for both for many years... Probably bought and sold a dozen MX6's over the years. Owning both UK and Jspec variants and modifying them mechanically quite a lot.

I occasionally look out for one... prices have risen a lot and they're super rare in the UK now.

Re: My next car, should I need one

2008 Honda Accord EX CDTi, passed it's MOT once more without failing on anything... this year an advisory for signs of cracking on a rear tyre that's 6yrs old, has 50% tread left and has covered 23000 miles... The last time it failed an MOT was 3yrs ago for a headlight aim fault... because I'd forgotten to plug something back in correctly after refurbishing them.

It still gets me into the 40mpg range with only short journeys. It has a couple of niggles, the seat part of the heated seat on the drivers side no longer works, but the bolster part does and the little top dash LCD flickers on/off due to a dry joint on a pin... and the bluetooth failed.

I bought it in 2018 for £1800... an identical car on autotrader with 20k fewer miles on is £3500

I do know it will need replacing at some point... but used car prices in the UK are 3-4 times higher than they used to be since covid and I'm reluctant to spend £6k on a 10yr old car, when I've never spent more than £2k for my 'bangernomics' driving... Which is where I buy a luxurious spec car that's reliable (which always means Japanese built) for bargain basement money and drive it around until it becomes uneconomical to keep.

I spend an avg of £1500 a year for fuel, insurance and maintenance... Whilst my friends with their leases and HP newer cars are paying 4x as much... and complaining about being skint all the time... I laugh all the way to the bank.

Google embraces third party app stores and payments to put Epic Games case behind it

Yet they're doing the exact opposite with Android and locking it down further to reduce access, competition and ability to choose where and what you install on the devices you own.

Thankfully, it appears that Motorola are teaming up to release a phone with the Graphene OS on it https://itsfoss.com/news/motorola-grapheneos-team-up/ and speaking as some one who bought into the Wileyfox Storm and Cyanogen OS in the early 2010's... It cannot come soon enough. My current Pixel 6 Pro is over 3yrs old now and at some point in the next 12 months, I would have been looking to replace it... and I was using Motorola phones from around 2015 to 22023 because they offered a vanilla android experience without all the overlays and bloat.

Hurry up and release something decent Motorola... You've got a buyer right here... I'll then look at tinkering with the pixel to install graphene on it too, can give it to my mum... who's on a lower spec older Motorola that I gave her.

Firefox 148 adds master switch for browser bot bother

LibreWolf here

Installed the update, immediately turned of all AIslop bollocks.

Maybe if they start seeing how many have turned it off... they'll give up trying to force it on you... It's why I've switched to librewolf for my most used sites and only use firefox now, for places like ebay, elreg, amazon and so forth. Different browsers, a plugin that randomizes what browser it reports, containers to sandbox sites and everything going through a VPN... I can confuse sites that rely on cookies, IP and browser fingerprinting to raise the prices you see.

Recycling biz reckons AI features are destroying smartphone resale values

Re: 42 percent of people in the UK are willing to trust AI.

Local council where my friend lives asked for names for new dustbin collection lorries... You got the usual... I was disappointed my old gamer tag wasn't amongst them. 'DustyBinLaden'

Re: Is this the first sign ....

There have been about a dozen 'first signs' in the last 6 months... the backlash is growing... but it's still strongest amongst those that understand how worthless it is in pretty much all 'generative' forms... Until we reach a critical mass where general consumers tell them to fuck off and refuse to use it... the bubble won't burst.

But burst it will... they are reliant on being able to collect your data, sell you a subscription and serve you ads... and the numbers being invested cannot be recovered in the typical 'shareholder attention span' who demands 'line goes up and to the right' every 3 months.

Re: "destroying smartphone resale values"

My first android smartphone was a HTC way back around 2010... my previous smartphone to that was a Sony P990i that I made last 4yrs... It came with default apps for things like twitter, facebook and others... that could not be uninstalled... and then it came with the HTC variants of those exact same apps... that couldn't be uninstalled... none of them could be disabled either.

On a phone with very little storage and memory... it was a shitty move that made sure I never bought a HTC again.

If there's an AI feature and it can be disabled... I disable it... local based AI on the device such as adjusting pics to remove pylons or people for example are fine.

Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way

Re: Kinda obvious...

I do the same sort of thing, so it's not some random generated code, but more of a phrase... Each one unique to the site/account.

A simplified way of explaining it would be... Imagine you have an account on a site all about cooking. What you want is a phrase that's both uniquely personal and about the subject matter. So you might use something along the lines of GrandmAsCh4cCh1pCoOki3S1926

That's a 26 character password.

Of course when you do that for dozens of different sites and accounts... trying to remember them all is a problem... I don't use password managers because they've been cracked in the past.

I use a little innocuous notebook, that I keep in one of the drawers... given that some one would have to break into my house, know about the book and know that the passwords are not written next to a nice neat little account name for each site... Because I know what passwords are linked to what site by the phrase itself.

Is it perfect... no... there's no such thing as unhackable.

Have I ever had an account hacked... yes... but it was an old account from almost 30yrs ago before I started adopting this method about 8yrs ago... there was a time when I used the same password across multiple sites. I've periodically checked haveibeenpwned to see if any of my old accounts linked to old email address are on the list... and I've been transistioning away from US owned tech companies for many things.... especially email.

As memory shortage persists, vendor price quotes are not long remembered

Re: Hedging ?

This is just the next phase of the plan... you will own nothing and be happy about it... "all your PC belong to us" to quote the old game/meme. You'll be sold an expensive and probably proprietary "thin client" style device that connects to their slopcenters for a monthly fee... you cannot opt out of the privacy invasion, the monitoring and the deluge of ads you will be forced to endure because they also claim to own the rights to your eyes and ears.

Right now... the entire Earth is a resort for about 3000 of the ultra rich... and they think the rest of us are their fucking staff.

Time to burn it all down.

Anthropic tries to hide Claude's AI actions. Devs hate it

Re: Verbose mode

'Engineers' have no real concept of user interfaces... they just don't think that way.

I've quit projects because of that... sick and tired of trying to explain to the wilfully ignorant that adding features that work on a touch screen... DO NOT work with a mouse... infinite sideways scroll when you can drag your finger across a screen is fine... not when the same action with a mouse means moving you hand back and forth across the desk 10 times.

and that's just one minor irritation I came across... I'm in charge of testing and quality control... and telling these idiots that it's not working properly for users is met with blank stares.

I'm so glad I'm getting out of this industry in another 6 weeks... I'll happily go and work in a min wage job these days... don't need the salary any more... mortgage is paid, no debts... just need enough to pay the bills, fuel the car, put food on the table... and min wage will easily cover that and more... could even go part time. Time for the other half to be the main earner for once. :)

Re: "The session just burns through my token quota."

It's always about the result... never about the process and the more they can hide the process the better they can bullshit (unknowing) users into thinking it's actually intelligent.

Memory price explosion triggers PC buying spree

HP are leasing laptops for a monthly fee of around £40, Playstation have announced as monthly rental plan of £9.95... You will own nothing and be grateful for it you pathetic little peons... your techno masters no better.

The UK government isn't spending much taxpayer cash on X

The EU has a masto account... the UK does not

Then you get the argument from the council... 'we advertised it on xitter'

How many of your constituents use twitter? "erm... we don't know"

Before you spend the money on advertising, first you have to be certain that your constituents are regular users, follow your dept and will actually see the ads you are paying for.

If you can't be certain of those things, it's a waste of taxpayer money and funding a fascist leaning network...and that's... collaborating.

I've been on masto for around 5yrs, deleted xitter in 2018, facebook in 2012, G+ when it shut down in 2018... never used any of the other corpo owned fascist propaganda networks.

The number of UK users who joined in the xitter exodus of 2022 was around 150,000... I'd say about a 3rd of those couldn't get to grips with it... expecting to be able to continue shitposting for likes/shares and not actually having to engage with anyone... but the number of people joining has been increasing and whilst not all of them stay... enough do to make it a thriving community. There's a huge UK based presence across multiple instances.

But no govt accounts at all... the EU manage to have them though.

Given the number of elderly and children in the country... that figures would mean almost every single UK citizen between the ages of 16-65 was using it...

Sniff.... sniff.... smells like bullshit from the usual govt sources.

people liked posting on twiitter because it was convenient for them. It was literally a post and let everyone else (or the bots) do your work for you... It was the culmination of shitposting links for likes/shares.

At it's peak... only 400 million users, out of nearly 8 billion people on the planet... a market of 5%... and the claims that 50% of those were bots...probably accurate, probably a lot higher now.

The argument that ' we should use a platform that people are actually using, rather than what we want them to use' is a pathetic one, an excuse for the lazy and incompetent... it's too inconvenient to try something new, it's too hard to try and teach the tech illiterate in charge of tech policies how to use it.

This govt should have a full presence on masto, they should be using their own instance and all personnel should be posting to it, the cost is negligible to what they are spending in the pedoplace... the EU manages to do it.

Convenience does not trump what is morally and ethically right... they are their to serve the people.

Govt depts and personnel should not be using platforms owned and controlled by nazi leaning fascist paedophiles at all.

OpenAI introduces ads...for the people!

Re: Dear Mr. Altman

unfortunately... I think not... there are those dumb enough out there to think of it as such.

Re: Whispering the unspeakable

this is the way

I'm predicting that openAI won't exist within 3yrs... the numbers just don't add up... they'll crash and burn and get gobbled up by one of the others... I think they'll be the first domino to fall.

GitHub ponders kill switch for pull requests to stop AI slop

Re: AI Slop Jockeys versus reality

They only ever talk about the alleged results it can bring, they never talk about the process of getting to those result. because the moment they do, everyone will see behind the curtain at the sad little man pretending to be the wizard.

I predict that openai won't exist within 3yrs... they'll go bust and get gobbled up by by one of the others... doesn't matter who, they're all owned/controlled by fascist supporting POS

The backlash is growing, normal consumers are getting sick and tired of it... the phrase "ai slop" has become common speak, kids are saying 'that's so ai' when some one is trying to bullshit them, or they think some one is being fake.

When I ask people if they use it... the majority say no... the few that do, have only used it to edit pictures they've taken on their phones... and a few more have 'accidentally used it when searching for things because it was forced on them without choice by the vendor.'

Cloudflare CEO threatens to make the Winter Olympics a political football after Italy slugs it with a fine

Re: Please allow me...

The old muskrat minions are out in force downvoting people again... they always crawl out when ever his naziness is mentioned in articles.

Re: the ugly american face of SaaS

Just tell the USA that Italy has the largest supply of ₒₗᵢᵥₑ Oil in the world.

Re: the ugly american face of SaaS

"Piracy is a problem, but overreaching power from private rights holders without meaningful legal oversight and also is a problem."

I disagree with that.... corporate greed is a problem, piracy is a solution. If things were available and affordable for all, piracy wouldn't be an issue. I grew up copying tapes as a little kid for my C64, floppy disks as a teen in the 90's, then CD's and DVD's. Then the internet really took off and I found I could order 3 or 4 movies from a a Canadian site called DVDsoon and have them delivered to my door for the same price as buying one DVD in the UK... until it's demise. Play.com got a lot of my business too as it was much cheaper than buying in the UK.

I was turned from a pirate into a subscriber with netflix, and then others... I purchased my first copy of windows with W7 Pro after 15yrs of using pirated copies.

Then they started with the enshitification... I started cancelling subscriptions... first getting rid of sky replacing it with a freesat box... then prime... Now the only thing I subscribe to still is netflix... and that's only because my mum came to live with me a few years ago and loves her Korean soaps... Otherwise that would be gone too.

If I want to watch something friends have recommended to me... and it's not on netflix... do I not bother watching it, or do I find an alternative?

Re: Please allow me...

If we can start by blocking twitter, facebook and so forth... I'm good with that.

Re: Please allow me...

Yeah... I was agreeing with most of the arguments in the article... until he went down the 'I'll agree with and support Nazi's if it gets me what I want' route.

Re: Please allow me...

Are you psychic and immediately know the gender of every individual poster who is allowed to use whatever display name they choose?

Or are you using gender as a cover for your overly sensitive nature when it comes to colourful language.