Posts by NATTtrash 592 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2019
Indeed. Why spend so many valuable cycles in retrieving/ sieving out/ asking through these pesky permission settings (Is this app allowed access to your contacts?) when you can roll out the blue eyes (do no evil!) and persuade people to give you their closest contacts themselves? Roll out the contacts mapping and analyse their interactions!
I get what you say. And TBH you're not alone. Many, especially those making money with their boxen, have the same considerations. Although it (of course!) depends on personal needs and preferences, think about the update possibilities you have with distros like for example Mint or Debian. I did it for some going from (I think) Vanessa to Zara and (for sure) Bookworm to Trixie. Debian had some more "inter version" changes, predominantly in additional packages the user installed specifically, where Mint looked with less prompts. However, in both cases the process was pretty smooth, painless, and done in an odd hour. Don't know of course whether this would work for you, but have a think about it if you are installing fresh anyway...
This looks like an area AI might finally make money.
Yeah, well... Many of us here have been around at the beginning, when the biz types were asking us "what to do with this interwebz thing".
And pron has always been the gift that keeps giving. Although it would not surprise me if the move is also the last spasm before...
"Plop!"
As it says: Given other recent OpenAI news, it seems monetization may be the driving force for the company, which has yet to disclose profitability.
“Your Plastic Pal who’s Fun to be with”
I know we live in the age of inclusion...
However, when I look at the picture with the avatars, I see clearly that the base and driver of internet development is missing. A break with SOP.
Perhaps you here know the answer? Where is the blond with the big boobies? Or has she grown into grandma here?
On-line banking I do from my Debian (Linux) machine.
I do too. And experienced that for some of them that seems to be "an issue". I was "told" that I could not "be verified". Eventually I moved elsewhere, but, as always, it took a lot of time and effort, a lot of "compliance" and little "customer service and convenience", while it is uncertain how long things will keep working. I suppose a next step towards "resistance is futile"...
Morpheus: We have only bits and pieces of information, but what we know for certain is that some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence...as we gave birth...to A.I.
Neo: A.I. - you mean Artificial Intelligence?
Morpheus: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don't know who struck first - us, or them. But we know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
This sounds like it is just the mobile OS on the desktop.
You think? To me it sounds more like standard business practice, nothing to do with tech. Basically it is
[1] following the same strategy as Apple has, locking in users, creating the walled garden by taping all the different devices/ services together (think also Apple communication today attacking EU DMA) and
[2] as it says in the article too ""I think the opportunity for us that we see is how do we accelerate all the AI advancement that we're doing on Android and bring that to the laptop form factor as rapidly as possible, and also have the laptop and the rest of the Android ecosystem work seamlessly together?" he said on Wednesday.
[...]
But Samat said merging Google’s two OSes is mostly about AI. Like everything else this year."
The solution looking for a problem...
... I search for how to disable it or otherwise make it go away.
I know the feeling. Lappie was getting pretty old (10+) so got new one. When it arrived, dd'ed it and put *nix on it. Smarty pants, right? Up to the point I tried to remap those Co-peelot keys... Left now with a couple of useless, function-less keys that don't let themselves be remapped. Are very intelligent. Push them, nothing happens. Nothing. Crickets. As usual with tech lately, turns out you pay more for less. And then we are not even going into the whole "whose your daddy" question...
Perhaps that is the main issue with all this, no?
"...by customizing the options and disabling features I didn't like/need"
You being your own master, being used to "have the luxury" (apparently) to do that, and then running into "the new paradigm": "Please don’t theme our apps
Ah yeah, modern times...
Wow cancellation fee for early termination?
As if $20 a month for just illustrator isn't an overcharge to begin with, apparently they will charge you an $84 early cancellation fee.
Major kudos to Clem and his folks for "being old-fashioned"...
We are having a laugh about it. But there certainly is something is rotten in the state of Denmark...
Guardian: ‘AI psychosis’: could chatbots fuel delusional thinking?
Scientific American: Truth, Romance and the Divine: How AI Chatbots May Fuel Psychotic Thinking
Psychology Today: The Emerging Problem of "AI Psychosis"
...and juicy (told you so?) ones...
BBC: Microsoft boss troubled by rise in reports of 'AI psychosis'
I'm sure co-peelot can find you much more if you ask it. =P
https://github.com/xapp-project/libadapta
After all, many "struggle" with the GNOME "policy" and Mint comes here with a potential solution for the whole of the community.
Here, have an upvote from another weird one. And then we are not even talking about the self-invited nuclear waste and drought in their future. Also not so sure about the remarks here on governments/ EU tackling this clearly monopolistic behaviour (IE any one?). Think about it, how many times do you see government, or so-called "public" apps distributed through channels other than Playstore/ AppStore?
My time is not free.
Well, let's hope "somebody" is not paying your time you spend on these pages here, now do we?
But, if you really want to waste some time (or have a laugh for free), why don't you try saving a document, say a docx, in Word, as a odt? You know, that ISO26300 standard? It is an option offered. After all, if you really want to have a for sure crap result, better do it with industry grade software, no?
We have all seen people use Excel for all kinds of things it was never meant for, most likely/ preferably something non-mathematical. Now, in their quest to tailor their products to their customers needs, through focused and deliberate product development, MS has finally automated these critical processes.
...
People engaged in internet marketing used to bleat that ad-blocking equated to theft. I suggest the opposite: internet advertising is theft.
They didn't suggest to you yet that you "can have the full, ad-free, upgraded quality service for only XX of your finest British Pounds per month?"
(Why did I have to think of this nice Black Mirror one with the IT Crowds Chris O'Dowd?)
If you've installed and enabled StarDict...
I saw Bobby @Linuxiac also writing about this about a week ago.
I have 2 boxen here with Bookworm and one with the daily of Trixie working up to the 9th. I checked them all, but can't find any Stardict. Am I cross eyed, or is it not installed by default? Because TBH the pieces about it seem to suggest that. Anybody have any wise words on that?
OK. So. Can you de-install it? That sounds like that somewhat old-fashioned principle of "choice", I know, I apologise....
Oh, and another silly question, sorry, but... does it use resources? You know, the power I pay for? On device storage I need to buy so I can store my family pictures? Bandwidth? So it doesn't cost me any money? Free™ you say? Ah...
Nah... But be happy to see that diversity is back in the US, and TSA is hiring blind people...
The TSA had no comment at time of publication. However, it claims that facial scans are only used to match a person's image against their ID, and that pictures aren't stored "except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology."
Using your eyes (and brain) is sooooo last century...
Not on MS but *nix. Got myself a new lappie recently, which came with W11 (never booted, immediate dd), and that one too has ever more "special" keys that seem to have been supplied to increase my intelligence.
Funny thing though: when I run xev to get their specifics so I can reassign, I get nothing back at all. A key press just does nothing. Generates no xev response. So it is not resting. It's dead. Bereft of life. A stiff. Gone to meet its maker.
Anybody here seen this before? Suggestions to have that key join the happy family (again)?
You'd think they'd have learned by now.
It's not going to happen, and you know it. We all heard people tell you in your role as "techie" that they have to buy a new computer... and then, between the lines, you figured out all they needed is a new BIOS battery. Mobile phone users? Light might be on there, but in the majority of cases I doubt whether there is anybody home. So... Will there be "a change"? Meh. Will "warnings" be heeded? Really? Raise a hand if you heard: "Paranoid!" "Industry standard!" "Inter-connectivity and compatibility!" "Commie!" As Liam writes, more general, do we see people learn from natural disasters (we had a severe flooding here) where "mobile phone availability" was ranked above "cut off electricity and water". Geez, and how to charge that mob? Bicycle with old school dynamo anybody? ... Ah, electric bicycle... Right. What about a digital payment system stumble that makes officials say it would be good to have "50 euros in cash for emergencies"? Have you asked them to read a map (think of that technical invention called paper) to get from A to B? No, it is baffling, but it will not tell you where to take a left...
Will they all come crying at your door step when it all comes goes ...---... ...---... ...---... ?
I prefer Zoom but agree that it's starting to try and do too much. I don't want calendars and off-meeting messaging, nor the host of plugin apps - I just want something that does videoconferencing, and Zoom does that well.
This indeed. It all used to be a couple of MB. Nowadays the size of the update/ download I see is bigger than my kernel. Then again, there are more guilty ones in that same corner...
And to add to my own moaning: it seems "there are more of us", so after about 2 years @Gnome are contemplating making the GUI customisable in Evolution ("It's for 3.55.1+") direct, sparked by the issue we were discussing originally. Have a look here. Not sure about the buttons in the topbar though...
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/2294
(My apologies to the TBird people for this subject highjacking...)
...but what does the change to rss.source do?
It disables and removes an annoying and useless News and Blogs entry in the tree view on the left (scroll down and you see it) where you can have all your accounts and their subfolders listed. And since, contrary to the Gnome people, I do not think that having the "Better Apple Pie" and "More Lego Adverntures" between my business email accounts is useful, I disable it like that, killing it at birth.
Have ran Evolution for more than a decade now. And with very little (Evolution!) complaints I must admit. Since I have to make my money by getting my email/ calendars from other peoples MS Exchange servers, and because it was a PITA to get (and keep!) it setup (OAuth2) and running (But why do you not buy a Windows computer then?), I'm kind of hesitant to fix it if it is not broken.
Having said that though, (the GUI of) Evolution is also not safe from the people with the Gnome kiddie crayons and too much phone screen time on their hands, and upon sync between my different systems I already have to
gsettings set org.gnome.evolution.shell use-header-bar false;sed -i "'s/Enabled=true/Enabled=false/g'" $HOME/.config/evolution/sources/rss.source
so it becomes a tool again that you can make your money with efficiently.
The threat out of the Gnome camp however is that "Gnome can taketh away" this little GUI tweak. And since we are on the topic of TBird anyway...
Many mention using it with webmail. But what are your experiences with plugging it into EWS, OAuth2 and stuff? All the stuff like email, calendar, contacts and tasks still working? Both local and remote?
@Liam: Coming your way again on 2 wheels tomorrow...
This gentleman actually extracted them from the dll, so you can update your current day box...
As far as I could determine the translation was accurate enough
MD here. Honestly? Errmmm... Not really.
Reading them side by side, a lot of the meaning got lost. Just to mention a few: the original text describes a contiously ongoing process, where the dumbed down version presents it as an end result, something stationary. Furthermore, it described damage, thickening of the tissue *between* the alveoli, the small lung sacks where oxygen is taken in, and CO2 expelled. The dumb text looses this distinction, throws everything "in the lung proximity" on one heap. Imagine this as a process over a membrane: if the membrane is thicker, this process becomes more hard. The "scarring" (different process, but hey) getting thicker of that "membrane" is because of a continuously ongoing infectious process against a "trigger". This trigger can be, yes, cigarette smoke, but also many other things like for example coal dust, asbestos, diesel fumes, pigeon fungi, solvents in paints and glues, and loads more, you get the idea. That oxygen needs to get in your blood, so it can be distributed across your body. But the walls of your vessels also get thicker because of this "out of control" infectious process. So your "sats" go down (measured with that clothes peg thing on your finger), you feel out of breath more and more. Now, did that text give you that?
I do understand this is a dumbing down tool, but then we also come into the topic of what is dumbing down? How to dumb down. And most important, why to dumb down. This is also an issue what I have seen (lost) when people use LLMs for for example making a quick abstract of a full text. Meaning is lost. And more scary, meaning is interpreted differently, and thus changed. Why this IMHO is worrying is...
For example: globally a physician has the legal obligation to get patient consent before treatment. For that (s)he has to explain what is going on, what the (best) intervention is, and ask the patient whether (s)he would like to proceed as suggested/ advised. Of course, it is critical in this process that patient understands what is said, so (s)he can make an educated decision. That's why you are always asked (I hope) if you are happy, and whether you have any questions.
The text here could not be used for that, because a lot of its meaning is lost. So yeah, sure it "broadly" describes what is written. But is it properly "translated"? Personally I would not spend the Wattage/ energy on it. But hey, this is Google trying to sell you something, so you know what that means.
As it is I suspect most radiology and pathology reports are routinely "machine assisted" or at least copy and paste.
Yes, you are right there. And if not "on the machine" when writing it down, then also in the head of the diagnosing physician. We all do something (again, I hope) called DD, differential diagnosis, which basically is a SOP for diagnosing, making sure you tick all boxes and consider options and alternatives. Just like any problem solving process I suppose...
For me you hit the nail on the head there. In the end it is pretty simple I think. If you tell world+dog, as they did in the original version:
Does Firefox sell your personal data?
Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That's a promise.
Notice that in a lot of the quotes that are now all over the webz, in many that last sentence is omitted. Here, I noticed, Liam and Thomas do too. But maybe that is what it is all about. IMHO, it is pretty irrelevant what you promise. It is more that you did. You gave your word. And if you then show your word isn't worth... anything, what does that make you? Then again, probably too old fashioned for the current world...
Curious what will happen to spin offs now that use its base, like e.g.Tbird and Zotero...
Teams => Zoom
OneDrive, there are tons of options around. GDrive, Box, Dropbox... In fact Dropbox was the OG before OneDrive was a thing.
Even easier (as in lazy) options available. Have been using (as in "earning income". Yes, really.) Ismael Martinez' "Unofficial Microsoft Teams for Linux" for ever since MS decided they couldn't be arsed to deliver Teams for Linux themselves. It works brilliant. When working with "MS only" organisations it works seamless. My Evolution plugs into their email, calendars and so on. Ismaels Teams does the same: everything just works™, calendars, VOIP, chat. People can even see whether you're online or not (you can also "appear offline" ;))) and you can do your direct calls. And, if you click one of the files while browsing the OneDrive/ Share point... the corresponding MS application starts up, whether it is Word, Excel, PowerPoint. And yes, you can work in that document "collaboratively". And then share/ signal others.
And perhaps the best thing? That there are deb and rpm repos available (THX Nils Büchner) so you can let your Teams for Linux update automagically with all your other *nix software sudo apt update.
So guess who this pint is for..?
Basically, for 90% of I needed to then and since these packages worked fine.
Indeed, very true. And that is something that never stops to amaze me: listening to "others" nowadays, it all seems to hinge on "The Only One"™ and no alternatives "exist". Or should even be considered!
Reading through Nina's piece I had vague (Age? Booze?) memories of GEOS on the C64. Which did the job too, making me happy since I could not afford a PC yet. It all worked fine, despite the PITA of printing the final version of your project report on a 8 pins Oki printer... the night before you had to hand it in... ALL through the night..... Niiiiii, clank, niiiiiiiiiii, clack, niiiiiiiiiii, clank. Luckily my bed was located above the cupboard with the Oki... in a very careful configuration so the paper didn't tangle/ jam...
But yes, I agree. Later managed to get an IBM 30 out of a bust office auction. And WordPerfect 4.2 on it was... well, perfect. The WYSIWYG graphics of 5.0 were just "unnecessary indulgence". Quattro Pro did everything I do today too. CorelDraw let me make those images that looked very nifty in Harvard Graphics. And yes, ReferenceManager gave you that feeling automation really, REALLY saved you SO MUCH time and work. (Who of you have done, like me, their in text literature refs by hand,,, and then had to reorder all subsequent references and their list at the end 10.000 times, because you added reference #24? ;)))
Microsoft got lucky
@Liam: THX for the piece Liam! Let me add a thought here: I also think it was (just) very clever marketing. What I do remember from those days too that Microsoft "allowed" people to copy and use Windows everywhere. Everybody had a copy of Windows on their home computer. The running argument was that if people used it at home, they would nag their boss to also get it at work (where the MS money is made). It was all over the place, everybody gave it to everybody. And it was all good. And possible, since all could use it on their PCs. Contrary to the (way more expensive) Apple (software). And thus MicroSoft applied the "dealer-dependancy" model which works up to this day: give it away for free, get them hooked on it, and then charge them for it.
But yeah... "No fancy windows, no unnecessary bloat, just basic, it works, software". Happy days...
Me: "I don't install apps on my phone."
Them: "But why not?"
Well, you must be of a certain age, believing there is something ethereal like free choice and all that...
Council of the EU, Press release, 26 March 2024 10:30
European digital identity (eID): Council adopts legal framework on a secure and trustworthy digital wallet for all Europeans
...or...
BENEFITS: Why EU Digital Identity Wallets
And yes, this is the EU. But don't smirk. I'm not so confident that other territories will let this opportunity slip by unused.
I know, it's just a trivial, silly remark, but what about... ermm safety? I seems that the drivers attention is required fully to operate and steer the vehicle safely. I'm sure everybody reading this can mention IRL examples of seeing drivers, whose attention was "distracted"? Then again, I'm sure you lot can all text and drive perfectly at the same time.
So yeah, let's not do drugs and alcohol in traffic, let's be modern and do phones and in-car ads...
<Hello there cloud...>
Then again, it will be interesting to see who this will play out long term. After all, Google is one of the largest, if not THE largest source of income for Mozilla. This grumpy person has seen many examples where bottom line always wins over principles™. But even if that happens, it might be amusing to see how it will be worded this time...
Simple user trying to understand...
On some hardware, LZ4 1.10 compresses data over five and up to nearly ten times faster than previous releases by using multiple CPU cores in parallel.
So how is this different then to pigz (https://github.com/madler/pigz) and pxz (https://github.com/jnovy/pxz), that, as far as I know, also do multi-core and we already have some time?
To be fair, the XApps initiative is something in that direction, isn't it?
That's like doing business in Germany in the 1939-1945 period.
Why are you surprised? Since inventing it, humans by default seem to go for "opportunities" making them vast quantities of money.
The second service to usually fail is the cellular network and internet, right after the power fails.
Very, very true. I would even venture to say that they go before base power fails. But that is a bit difficult to understand for a generation/ society that doesn't dare to leave the house without a mobile glued to their hand. Will be interesting though if somebody in the future strikes that Pompeii-like archeological find from the 21st century: "They met their end apparently, sitting in the corner, staring passively at in their hand. We are not sure about this behaviour, it might be something religious..." Ah well, if it doesn't appear on the screen of your mob, it isn't true any way...
Perhaps..? "Do one thing and do it well"
Kudos for bashing it out...
https://github.com/dkorolev/bash-tetris/blob/master/tetris.sh
Well, to be fair, there is a bias with the El Reg audience of course. But I would not be surprised if it's (also) an expression of the "bought it but never mine" dislike under the surface, having no control.
Then again, I have no doubt that the same audience happily carries around their phones and would go back home if it turns out they left their home without it...
For me, that also applies to this discussion: I do agree that the MS product is rubbish, not worth your business. However, we all buy/ use it, and are hit with emotions ranging from anxiety to "shrug and sloth" when change is suggested... (Yeah, sure, I know this is not you because you run your potato server 1976 edition. Don't be silly and do the Doctors Dot and Bubble please)
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