4grams

We are not facing skynet, but the techbros, media and government all want us to think so.

They did not “escape”, they were able to find security holes in pootly protected environments that they had access to. They performed the same security tests against live sites online, which also had security flaws. They did not spread, or escape, nor are they hiding on servers anywhere like in the movies. They simply performed a remote exploit after using a local one to get internet access.

These things are dangerous, but as a weapon in people’s hands. They still have off buttons, we still have all the control. But the narrative makes it feel like an inevitability, we’ve all watched too much sci-fi and aren’t using critical thinking skills.

Omg, I saw that episode when it was first broadcast. My buddy and I laughed so goddamned hard at that scene. Upvote for you!

I’m convinced this is deliberate. We are not facing a skynet situation, AI is not going rogue. This is shitty security during user initiated testing that they did not fully understand.

They want us to think that AGI is around the corner and so publicizing these hacks is doing that work in the uninformed public’s mind. I’ve had to explain to several people the reality of these attacks, but even now, watching the news, they are trying to scare us with made up stories of out of control AI.

I mean, can always rip them to flak as well if you are worried about quality. Even still, a good high bitrate mp3 sounds perfect to me so I still use it too.

Working on reorganizing my old music collection to try to de-apple. It’s a bigger pain in the ass than I expected, and I’m missing so much that I’ve added via subscription. Gotta do it though, I’m sick of paying subscriptions for everything.

I used to be a good tipper. I still am for genuine service, but the default “tip every transaction” has pissed me off enough that unless you personally handled my food, or performed a service for me, I instantly stab 0.

I was a a baseball game the other weekend, they had a self service kiosk for bottles of soda, a glorified vending machine. It had a default 18% tip added to the transaction that I had to drill into a menu to zero out. Fucking bonkers, not a human in sight, just a couple of sensors and a credit card terminal.

Tip culture has gotten way out of control since Covid, I’m refusing to participate anymore.

Pretty much. I’m a data hoarder, to a degree. My homebuilt, Ship of Theseus NAS is about 15 years old, and it contains data going back over 20. I save everything I produce.

I figure that one day, this data of mine will be fed into a system for future use, in the vein of how they construct people in the Star Trek Holodeck. So, I feel it’s up to me to curate that data, and be sure it’s accurate and reflects who I am.

These days it’s obvious that it will eventually be turned into training data for an LLM, but then at least, my data will have some structure and personality to it. Maybe someday a joke will be cracked for someone that came from a pattern I established. Probably not, but one can dream.

I don’t know, my mom brought me some Carolina reaper sauce from the UK a couple years ago. It was pretty good, but it was not the reaper level I was used to. I kinda loved it since I could eat it by the tablespoon and feel tough as nails.

Update- for the record, the ingredient label of it read “Carolina reaper paste, salt”.

This shit drives me up a wall. I try to only buy peanut butter made out of peanuts, so for years now I’ve been buying “natural” peanut butter. I recently noticed however that 100% “natural” doesn’t mean shit as all the natural brands are loaded with palm oil. I honestly might have to start making my own.

It sucks because my family treats me like an insane person when I look at the ingredients and nutrition of the food stuff we buy. Food culture in the US is awful, just awful.

I don’t think it’s as hard to draw a line as you are portraying it. The hypothetical nurse and bread factory is a non-issue, we’re talking fractions of the bottom line of any of the involved parties. This mulvad thing is the majority of the financial backing of a party by one high level person, who’s made his money from this organization.

I’m quite comfortable putting them under the same umbrella, and quite comfortable ignoring the hypothetical.

But think there might be a philosophical question here, but I kinda think this is begging for one a bit.

It came to me last night, how all this AI and the difficulties obtaining hardware. This is all them trying to end the idea of ownership, at least of your data. They want to control all the data, so everything you do, every picture you take, every game you play, every essay you write, will be only available in the cloud. We are getting close to the point where are must pay for every bit of our own data that we access.

This is the inevitable result. I’m very glad I’ve spent years building my own library of content. I just hope I can continue getting replacement hardware to keep it alive.

I had a flight safe multitool, one that specifically had no blade, nor anything sharp. It only had tools for my camera. I also had a fisher space pen which they said looked too much like a bullet.

Both were confiscated, but they couldn’t figure out how to open the front flipper knife I had with me, so they let it through.

The TSA bullshit isn’t about keeping us safe.

Jokes on them, I’ve been a windows guy so long they have always been directories; I started in the dos days.

Good thing we’re about to give them a half a trillion dollars. Goddamn the entire world sucks.

I understand the authors reasons, but for me personally, having paid for the app, I’ll use it until it no longer suits my needs. Right now it does early what I need and does not cause me any issues. As soon as the enshittification hits me though, I’ll abandon it for something else. I also would not recommend someone purchase it, given the new pricing, and the availability of free alternatives. Had they been there when I paid for Plex, I’d be using them instead.

We will if we keep expecting the “one weird trick”

What it will take is coordinated action, applied consistently, not this “I’ll fix everything immediately” bullshit people keep falling for.

Disclaimer: this is how long progress takes. People used to plant trees knowing they would never get to enjoy their shade.

Yes and no, I only buy refurbs these days, so long as they work out of the box, they have been far more reliable than retail drives from a box store.

Definitely higher incidents of DOA drives, but the ones that work, have been pretty solid.

Still don’t trust spinning rust, so in addition to dual parity raid, I also have a full backup copy. But I no longer have reservations about refurb drives…

I like the name, and I’ve got lots of projects in various states that I’d love to share. I’ll check it out.

I paid for it ages ago on a deal, and it currently suits my needs. It runs as a docker container and it just works. It’s easy enough for my elderly mom to use remotely and I’ve ripped my entire movie collection for her to watch. I also like the live tv that’s included with the pass.

I would switch in a heartbeat if it wasn’t doing what I need, but so far I have no complaints, it works well for my family’s needs.

It takes a bit of time to find the right distro and that is the biggest obstacle to linux imo.

It’s also the greatest benefit. Vanilla stuff works out of the box for most, but once you need more, there’s a paved runway headed in any direction you want to go (some in better shape than others to be fair).

Windows and OS X are certainly wider runways, but there are cliffs off the side of you want to change direction.

Good things usually take time, but you will know where you are when you get there.