A gold or yellow wash should salvage them.

A mottled tan “filter” at the other end will also make them more cigarette-like.

Penny Arcade did it best with the Magic Hate Ball.

https://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215099323_Noxws-L-2.jpg

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/08/13/how-indeed

In some fields, General Purpose LLMs are useful;

• Marketting copy that no one reads.
• Business reports that push an agenda for political reasons.
• Political analysis that puts an agenda for political reasons.

That is why they are being adopted wholesale by certain companies; marketeers and analysts for lobbying groups and political movements.

So yes, they are useless for any legitimate case, but are useful for justification of lies to certain gullible individuals (consumers and politicians).

That said, the fact that Deloitte was forced to (partially) pay the Australian Government back for a report that was all AI Dross is enheartening. The fact that it was only a partial refund and the company is not being prosecuted for Fraud is disenheartening.

It is Optimised.

Just not optimised for efficiency or ease of use.

It is optimised for extracting as much personal metadata as possible, feeding as many ads as possible, monopolising users attention and manipulating political opinions.

They are still in way too much. Every time I go into an Apple Store they try to ram their “Apple Intelligence” down my throat.

Here it is.

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-201801/_Electro_/mini-8865/

I have this set, complete. It was an amazing for the 1980s.

For me it was an amazingly cheap find in a Toy Shop in the 1990s, before eBay and Bricklink caused inflated pricing on old stock.

It was also huge.

Nowadays, using modern Technic, all the features can be built in a minifig-scale build.

Won’t these religious nut bags just Rapture already.

We don’t want them on this planet.

Just waiting for the “libertarian” government to use eminent domain to confiscate and gift the land to Musk…

Insert “2025 year of Linux Desktop” meme.

Honestly though, the only thing keeping gamers on Windows are the requirement of these Rootkits and inertia.

I let my Phone (and CarPlay) map my route for me; but I do like throwing a spanner in its workings by deliberately taking a wrong turn to explore.

Previously, I would do the same, but then I would have to pull over and spend 15 minutes browsing the Street Directly trying to figure out where I was before I was able to continue my journey.

Having a frictionless (and relatively) safe way of exploring has empowered me.

There were rumours that our two local Street Directories had been made Out-Of-Print. (Melway and UBD)

They are both still active, and a great resource for historians, but their distribution has been seriously curtailed.

We also have a collection of Adventure maps called Rooftops which still have great circulation despite the proliferation of Off-Road mapping apps.

Having offline-paper maps are invaluable when in certain conditions. I have been told that Rooftops are generated by one Cartographer who uses a Pushbike as his exclusive surveying vehicle. (Citation needed)

They were also semi structured. All my school-friends started with the same first area code and first chunk. I just had to know where they lived and remember the last 4 digits.

Mobile Phone numbers were randomly generated, and unless a social group deliberately got sequential numbers because we all got our phones at the same time, there would be no way to associate numbers.

I used to listen to classical radio stations as white noise when I wanted to get to sleep.

More recently, if I wake up due to insomnia, I will watch YouTube ASMR Restoration videos. The sound of sandblasting and electrolysis and sanding and polishing acts as a soporific.

If that is what they truely believe, the only humane thing for them to do is to euthanise.

Can we make it crash!? And never work again?

In that case I will insisting that my real doctors put as many typos as possible in their reports.

This may be considered “Shitty Business Practice”, but it is the only asset they have that they can sell.

Their only revenue streams are leasing access to the service for commercial use and selling transcripts to each other, data brokers, and governmental agencies.

Their only other income are more venture capital in a Ponzi Scheme so large that it makes Bernie Madoff look like Alan Greenspan.

That would explain why he had to check in with his FSB handler in Alaska last week.

F3probe is a program for verifying the legitimacy of Flash media (USB Sticks, SD cards and SSDs)

A lot of the aftermarket flash media claim certain performance and capacity numbers that they don’t meet.

https://linuxcommandlibrary.com/man/f3probe

ThIs Is JuSt A rEiMpLeMeNtAtIoN oF tHe “RND()” fUnCtIoN.

Honestly though, all the Tech Giants need to come out and admit that Bullshit Generators are Bullshit Generators and admit that they have made bad investments in scam artists companies.