Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-04-23T06:51:48+00:00

We Californians like our taxes ludicrous, our parks overflowing with homeless encampments (tents and all), and our energy bills obscene.

It makes you wonder where all the damn money is actually going. Not towards improving shit, that's for sure.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-04-16T14:50:32+00:00

Copilot: The software nobody wants, but everybody will get.

Not me though, I use Debian.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-04-09T18:43:08+00:00

You've gotta love it, actually. While Microsoft is exclusively focused on enshittifying and making Windows worse, Valve's Steam Deck is sneaking up on them and gaining market share/momentum. Much like with the Iphone and the Ipad, it will be too late to correct course and right the Windows ship by the time Microsoft notices what's going on.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-04-09T15:27:09+00:00

Who could have possibly predicted that creating a world where consumers can only buy locked down shit that they are not allowed to modify, alter, or repair, would result in something like this?

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-03-16T02:59:36+00:00

The only thing worse than pissing in your own pool, is pissing in somebody else's. Injecting ads and popups on me while I'm using a competitor's software is straight-up malware. If I wanted to be nagged, I would get married. At least then, I wouldn't have to just use my hand.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-03-14T16:34:44+00:00

Here we see the latest Microsoft acquisition in progress.

If the US government wanted to do something productive for a change, they would stop Facebook, Google, and Microsoft tracking everything people do.

Whether you're filling out a psychological profile online, paying your taxes, or looking up x-rated videos, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are watching.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-03-05T17:46:23+00:00

The next step will probably be making this thing pop up every fifteen minutes, covering what the user is doing, whether they like it or not. lol

Don't forget to take into account the number of users who didn't want this installed on their computers in the first place.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-03-04T23:07:05+00:00

Sorry about the Javascript paywall thing. It comes with the clusterfuck dogshit abortion of enshitification that the Internet is morphing into/has morphed into. Soon, you won't be allowed to read any articles at all online unless you are simultaneously signed in with Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple so that they can be assured that you are human, track everything you look at and sell that data to the highest bidder.

Anyway, as far as AI chat bots giving tax advice...

Jurassic Park said it best: They were so obsessed with whether or not they could, that they didn't take the time to stop and think whether or not they should.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-03-01T05:11:55+00:00

Reminds me of the MalwareBox One debut a decade ago, where they wanted to force you to be connected to the Internet at least once a day or else all your games would get disabled.

Unfortunately people get stupider and stupider by the decade, so this sort of business model is getting closer and closer to reality now. More and more people are comfortable with the idea of their stuff refusing to work if they aren't connected to the Internet.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-26T23:09:14+00:00

Microsoft is like that creepy uncle who doesn't take "No" for an answer, except, unlike the uncle, everything Microsoft does is sanctioned by the US government.

But just like with the creepy uncle, the best course of action is to stay as far away from them as possible. Far, far far away.

EDIT: Also, if you don't give them what they want, they'll just steal your shit anyway and say it's a bug.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/16/24074712/microsoft-edge-automatic-chrome-import-data-bug-fix

Every other month, their Chrome rip-off gets roasted by journalists for doing stuff behind the scenes that it has no business doing.

https://www.neowin.net/news/edge-sends-images-you-view-online-to-microsoft-here-is-how-to-disable-that/

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/microsoft-edge-is-sending-all-your-visited-pages-to-bing-how-to-turn-it-off

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-23T17:09:09+00:00

Not scared at all of this old as fuck, mentally deficient sack of shit.

I do have a legitimate question though. Why is so much of the world run by people who are so old that they have mentally regressed to the state of a toddler?

Why not put a 45 year old engineer or someone with a doctorate in charge of things, instead of people who probably couldn't tell you what they had for dinner last night? Do people who are free from dementia and Alzheimer's not lick enough corporate ass, and is that why we don't let them run the show?

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-19T07:32:11+00:00

In Reddit's defense, if you don't give the big tech/AI overlords the data they want, they'll just steal your shit anyway and say it was a bug, or for your own good, or both.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-19T03:44:30+00:00

It was all about getting consumers to embrace Windows phones and tablets by bringing the desktop down to their level. Huge flop, obviously. Windows phones and tablets are d. e. a. d. dead, and Windows is steadily, though slowly losing market share.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-18T03:47:30+00:00

I had an idea where anyone who browses the net while not logged into a Google account and a Microsoft account and a Facebook account and an Apple account and a Twitter/X account (all at the same time), is deemed to be a bot, and automatically barred/rejected from visiting most of the Internet.

You know they'll implement this eventually.

As for Hollywood, I couldn't care less if AI drives them out of business. In fact I would see it as a positive.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-16T22:45:45+00:00

Tablets and phones, sure. Consoles, hell no. I would love to see the Xbox fail in the market after what Microsoft tried to pull a decade ago, but even if it does/by the time it does, they will own 70+% of the game industry anyway, making it a moot point.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-15T05:49:01+00:00

Are you ready to be nagged to death for money by literally every website you visit? You thought the cookie banners were bad, intrusiveness, dark patterns and all, don't make us laugh.

Also, this will be the scapegoat and justification the Chrome people will eventually use for reintroducing web integrity/trusted computing into the browser, "to make sure it is secure".

God I hate having everyone and everything completely figured out. And if you think providing websites with "micro-payments" will make advertising and tracking go away, falls out of chair with laughter.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-13T22:31:44+00:00

The most entrenched players in the market get exempt from the new rules that were supposedly designed to ensure a level playing field for smaller ones. Government "regulation" in action.

Almost as spineless as the US; at least the US does not even pretend to care at all about reining in tech companies.

Small company: "We can't effectively compete because monopolists are using their monopolies in one market to drive out competition in other markets!"

US Government: "We know. Here's a quarter, phone someone who cares."

EU: "We know, we have new legislation in the works to fix this mess... now excuse us while we render it completely meaningless, by not applying it to literally the biggest companies in the world."

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-12T06:29:24+00:00

It would be so nice if Debian KFreeBSD had finished development, and we could just do "apt-get install kernel-freebsd" on our existing installations, while giving the people who are doing this the middle finger.

Maybe that's why they want to diverge Linux and BSD so much with stuff like Systemd and Wayland. Making it harder to escape.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-12T05:17:25+00:00

I think you misunderstand the situation. The change implemented in the production kernel version, breaks drivers for all Nvidia cards. Why in the world would Nvidia want to do that? I could maybe understand Nvidia breaking compatibility for older Nvidia cards, to sell the latest ones, but there is simply no way Nvidia would want what is going on here; because even their latest cards won't work.

Also I think the kernel developers who push these changes that are designed to sabotage Nvidia and their customers need to consider that Linux may be used in e.g. critical medical equipment. If they want to humiliate Nvidia, they can make a CUDA competitor that is mature and widely supported, but instead, vandalizing other peoples' stuff seems to be easier for them to do.

Again, the breakage on display here is not a bug or mistake, it's a "feature", coded by someone to disrupt functionality on others' systems.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-12T04:00:02+00:00

Quality of flash getting worse while price simultaneously goes up... smells like capitalism!

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-12T02:32:11+00:00

So yeah, they're breaking production systems now. This is not a bleeding-edge development or experimental environment. It is supposed to be reliable and stable. Honestly I'm tired of this bullshit squabble between a select few kernel developers trying to sabotage NVidia and fuck over us users. It has not been determined by any court of law that use of proprietary modules breaches any license, so from my perspective, what you are doing, is straight-up sabotage, trolling and subterfuge, and it's really no different than some punk-ass teenager going around breaking other peoples' windows.

Therefor, the Linux maintainers should ban and reject these select few developers from submitting further patches to the kernel, as has been done with University of Minnesota. To the developers who are breaking this, you are obviously not that high and mighty when it comes to free software ideals, otherwise you would not have allowed your code to make it into proprietary corporate shit-boxes that are swimming in closed source garbage/DRM such as smart TVs, set-top boxes and Android phones.

Patches (not) welcome.

References: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/22/22398156/university-minnesota-linux-kernal-ban-research

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-11T19:44:05+00:00

Reminds me of the Nintendo Virtual Boy. AKA their biggest mistake of all time.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-10T16:45:21+00:00

I thought they backed down from this because of a public uproar. Don't get me wrong I am no Sony fan, after the rootkit thing, and Securom making my legitimate older disk based games no longer playable on a new computer; which was the entire point of the shite all along; making sure I can't still use what I bought a decade later.

That's why I'm "not interested" in giving them any more money.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-04T03:37:31+00:00

Before enshitification and late-stage capitalism, games like Duke Nukem 3D came with programs to extract the game files and create custom maps and mods, right on the official CD! When you would quit the game, it would even inform you of this.

EDIT: Also, consolidation and acquisitions in the games industry will hasten the arrival of mandatory subscriptions for games... once the big players like Microsoft can make it into a "take it or leave it" affair, as is the case with so much in the tech sector today.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-04T02:44:59+00:00

Surprised they can't just fix this with a firmware update. They could even go all Orwellian and either detect/make sure that all sold vehicles have had the update applied to them, and/or disable the ones that have not had it yet until they do have it installed.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-03T16:58:08+00:00

Did I mention that the biggest reason I stopped buying games, is because I don't want to give some piece of shit on the other side of the world the ability to disable my stuff after taking my money?

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-02T19:00:30+00:00

This is why I refuse to support or deal with Microsoft products today. They can totally eat me.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-02-02T00:14:37+00:00

The big companies who actually do things like this, using overseas proxies and shell services to avoid association with their brand and simultaneously dodge liability, are probably laughing so damn hard right now. "Oh no, it's illllleeeeeegal!"

You know, like the bogus net neutrality comments thing. https://apnews.com/article/settlement-fake-public-comments-net-neutrality-ae1f69a1f5415d9f77a41f07c3f6c358

The check they got from the telecom industry was probably 4X the settlement.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-01-31T13:56:34+00:00

So apparently today, programs running on consumer PC garbage have to take steps to protect themselves from their data being stolen by other supposed legitimate programs also running on the same system, that the user doesn't even want being installed or ran in the first place.

Maybe each program can encrypt it's own files or something to stop competitors from pilfering the user's data. Or society can collectively switch to an operating system that isn't literally malware.

Myocarditis-Man · 2024-01-30T19:15:01+00:00

The government can't even get Boeing to properly assemble their planes, and THAT comes after the MCAS nightmare and supposed increased scrutiny.

The idea that this same government is going to do anything to punish Microsoft for lax security when it comes to customer-facing services (you don't see Xbox/Pluton being compromised because Microsoft actually cares about the security of these), is... bwahahahaha

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-27T16:42:59+00:00

Imagine if a restaurant that I regularly visit started putting rat shit in my food, so that I now have to pay them extra to avoid it.

This is the gold standard of customer service when it comes to the entertainment industry (games, movies, TV, you name it), and it's why I just don't give them money anymore, period.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-24T17:08:57+00:00

As far as Microsoft's Ewaste Extravaganza goes, on the bright side, we in the west will have more cheap/free computers to run Linux than we know what to do with, and people in third world countries will have plenty to eat. (The last bit of this is a joke, obviously.)

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-23T16:59:37+00:00

Not just Linuxbros. If Google is smart, they will launch a campaign to convert all these old machines to Chrome OS Flex "for free". It'd be easy theft of market share from Microsoft.

"Microsoft doesn't want to support your hardware anymore, so we will. Install Chrome OS Flex today and say goodbye to Microsoft Edge forever! It's free."

Hell, Windows has become just as much of a privacy dumpster fire anyway. In fact Windows has become worse than Chrome OS, because only one of these two feels like staying in the sleaziest roach motel in town, with nag screens, dark patterns and popups everywhere. Google may not have a great privacy reputation, but at least they know better than to do this.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-22T02:40:51+00:00

The real question is whether Microsoft can manage to fix this mess without fucking something else up in the process... lol

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-21T21:40:16+00:00

It's depressing how little has changed, actually. Most users are still racing to adopt cloud services where all their personal data is abused by corporations and governments, and all they have to show for it is a higher subscription bill this month than the last one.

It's like they learned nothing, or they just don't care. And to think, a man threw his American life away to expose what we all suspected all along.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-21T17:10:42+00:00

More dirt cheap/free Linux computers than one could possibly want.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-15T23:14:21+00:00

They really are driving away the techies with behavior like this. It's so heart-warming and satisfying to see the negative sentiments towards them going mainstream. All Microsoft will have left, are the grandmas who don't know how to defend themselves from sleazy business practices, thereby ensuring that Edge becomes the new IE, where only people who don't know any better are using it. But grandmas would rather use their Iphones or Ipads to go online than a dog shit Windows PC.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-12-10T15:11:23+00:00

This is the sort of thing that conclusively, without a doubt, proves animals are smarter than humans. Animals quickly learn not to trust, but humans are stupider than a lump of coal; stupid enough to support the same corporate shitheads that constantly screw them over, again and again and again.

Being naive and or clueless the first time is one thing, refusing to learn from one's past mistakes and continuing to make them while expecting a different outcome, is quite another.

So yeah, the customers who are losing purchased content here are getting exactly what they deserve. It's always fun to point, laugh, and say "I told you so."

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-11-24T14:58:24+00:00

Use Debian or Arch and Linux will probably give Windows even more of a thrashing. No snap crap + less bloat overall = more performance.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-11-13T15:20:40+00:00

You know you're living in a free country when the government dictates what stuff you are allowed to repair.

China steals IP, but America has created a world where you can't own the shit you buy and can't fix it when it breaks. Both of these are bad, but one of them is much, much worse.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-11-09T02:18:35+00:00

Let's load up a 10 or 12GB scene in Blender and see what happens. This here ain't much different than claiming that a 48 inch TV has as much screen area as a 72 inch TV.

Faster memory with lower latency will not save the day when it is exhausted. And no, thrashing the solid state drive to death with a swap file is not an acceptable solution.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-11-02T21:32:50+00:00

Still want to give these clowns your web browsing data and other extremely sensitive and personal information? Course ya' do!

Reminds me of that old saying, "What could possibly go wrong?"

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-30T18:15:56+00:00

Splash! That's the sound of five more tons of E-waste in the ocean. Still, it's nothing compared to what they have planned for the PC market with the dropping support for so many CPUs.

The fact is that if you're like me, and only interested in escapist single player games with an immersive story, and not interested in playing online and hearing shrill voices shouting obscenities in your ear, the downsides of connecting your console/TV to the Internet outweigh the upsides, by, probably a factor of ten.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-30T13:43:03+00:00

Do not want. Most ARM systems are completely proprietary, making it impossible to run a vanilla Linux kernel on them. The only reason this is possible on X86 is because it's a true standard. If we see a proliferation of ARM based PCs, we will also be seeing a large number of machines that can't effectively run anything other than Windows.

Yeah sure you might be able (with a lot of work) to make a version of Linux that runs on yours, and only yours, but you'll have no wifi or video drivers, and if you do, they will be proprietary and only for kernel versions X Y and Z. This is already how it works in Android land.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-25T20:25:35+00:00

If I ran the world, there would be an international policy where anyone who cyber-attacks a hospital, is permanently banned and becomes completely ineligible for any type of medical services or care going forward. Doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay, if you need surgery, your only option becomes to do it yourself, whether it's a tooth-pulling or a lobotomy.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-24T20:22:19+00:00

Since they don't have a textbox to answer the question, because they have nothing but contempt for their customers and are not actually interested in what we think; only browbeating us into submitting to their agenda, I figure we can list our reasons here.

I don't respond well to bullying or coersion. When you forced your software onto my computer without my permission even though I already have another browser that I am happy with, you already crossed that line.
Computers exist to shut up, respect my personal space, leave me alone and do as I say. Your software fails at all of these.
I trust you less than the other guy, if that's even possible.

I would actually be all for them giving users a survey, only if they allow users to respond in a text-box, and disclaim that responses will be publicly posted, if only to see what answers other users would come up with. Think of it as sort-of an anti-marketing campaign. You can even screen out all the vulgarity and profanity, I'm pretty sure it would still be a very entertaining read.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-24T16:44:06+00:00

Hahahahaha

That is all.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-23T22:49:47+00:00

At this point, I am wondering how many different settings scattered all around opt me into sending Microsoft my browsing history.

At least I would be wondering that if I wasn't using Linux.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-19T00:11:57+00:00

"If you won't use our shitty browser that is just a rip-off of our competitor's, at least let us steal your data!"

And since they opt you in to syncing your activity to the cloud by default, you better believe that's where it's going, and that's why they're allegedly doing this in the first place. Frankly I don't understand why this crap is not criminal. Oh wait, US justice is the cheapest hooker that money can buy, that's why.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-16T16:16:45+00:00

The worst part of accessibility is that, if you do all of the work to make stuff perfectly accessible for the disabled, a bunch of teenagers with ADHD and the IQ of a cockroach, AKA UI designers, will screw it all up six months later.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-13T16:51:30+00:00

Wayland... If it doesn't work with your NVIDIA graphics card, then get a better GPU. And if it's not compatible with your accessibility software, then get better eyes!

Here we have the most well-thought-out decision since Canonical's crusade to nuke 32-bit libraries from the archives right as Linux gaming was starting to gain momentum, reasoning that if Apple did it, then they had to do it too.

It's pretty amazing and remarkable the progress Linux has made as a usable desktop platform when people high up in the ranks are actively working to sabotage it.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-13T16:38:14+00:00

They forgot to tell me that it's for my own good and that I will like it.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-09T00:05:31+00:00

Regarding the guy saying he's shocked they would go that far.

When it comes to tracking you, big tech is doing all of the things you can think of, and also plenty of shit you haven't thought of yet. (as demonstrated here)

Being sneaky is what big G is all about. For example go do a search there right now and right-click on a result, copy it to the clipboard and notice that what you get isn't the actual link, it's a link that has been wrapped/encased in a manor that lets them know which result you click on.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-08T00:28:04+00:00

The bottom line is, you have zero chance at programming the computer of a self-driving car to handle all of the dumb shit that other motorists will do. And when stuff goes wrong, humans have survival instinct and generally react well to unforeseen situations. Computers fail spectacularly at both of these.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-05T17:41:07+00:00

Nothing short of another GWX-style malware campaign, where Windows nags you literally every day whether you are ready to "upgrade", and then just does it anyway after you have already refused their offer 350 times, will get people to throw out their old computers and buy a new one with Windows 11.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/241587-microsoft-finally-admits-malware-style-get-windows-10-upgrade-campaign-went-far

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-05T04:02:41+00:00

My prediction is, some day there will be ransomware for Internet connected cars that does stuff like this.

Sad to say, but a scenario like this is probably inevitable.

Hot tip to engineers and regulatory/safety authorities. You fucked up massively when you did not mandate an always ready and easily accessible way for human occupants to shut down the computerized vehicle in an event that it goes rogue. Something as simple as a power switch that cannot be overridden or ignored by software would suffice, and would have made the situation described in the article a complete non-issue.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-04T22:22:19+00:00

Web Integrity API from Google will be the end of Firefox anyway. Unless you are satisfied with a locked down browser on a locked down piece of hardware which is open to zero user customization or freedom, analogous to a shitbox from your cable company, and the polar opposite of what PCs and Firefox originally stood for.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-01T22:51:07+00:00

Google and Facebook...

Their goal is to know more about you than you know about yourself. I'd be surprised if they don't know the length, weight, and overall volume of the shit that I took this afternoon.

EDIT: As for how that would be implemented, they could have software running in my phone that analyzes the plop sounds while I'm on the can to determine the above factors of my stool. Has somebody patented that idea yet?

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-10-01T15:52:49+00:00

If the GPU market was not in the toilet, mainstream cards would not come with a useless 8GB of memory in 2023. Maybe Intel will put pressure on the AMD/Nvidia cartel, if Nvidia does not squeeze them out of the market first.

https://overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/nvidia_reportedly_pressures_partners_to_stop_them_building_next_gen_intel_battlemage_gpus/

Till then, there's used 24GB Tesla cards from Ebay.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-30T00:22:26+00:00

Android makers screwed themselves with the policy of "only 3 years of updates". One of the reasons I am willing to pay more when it comes to PCs, is that they last a hell of a lot longer than that. Oh yeah, and I have more control over PCs and what they do. No, I don't use Windows.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-28T23:00:14+00:00

Not if it is open source and entirely functional offline, things that are easily achievable with the crazy-as-fuck computers and especially GPUs we have today.

Instead, we're rewriting all our software in Javascript, even the desktop environment! ... completely wrecking performance and, for the commercial sector, designing more and more products to refuse to function at all without Internet connectivity.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-28T16:56:35+00:00

It's getting too expensive and too power hungry, and at that point you might as well just get a mini PC. Remember that $60/$80 is the price before the scalpers have had their way with the market. Pi is a "hot" product (i.e. in high demand), like game consoles, thereby attracting the attention of scalpers, whereas mini-PCs are in abundance.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-28T04:11:01+00:00

Surprised Microsoft doesn't buy Valve, purely to kill their Linux initiative and take the wind out of it's sales. But Valve is private, and I think you can only buy them if they want to sell. Microsoft's strategy is to instead, acquire as much of the games industry as they can and monopolize as much of the content people want as possible.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-27T15:49:32+00:00

The only "AI" I would trust, is something that runs offline, locally, and is open source.

I use Intel OpenImageDenoise all the time in Blender and it's awesome. It also meets all of the above criteria.

As for integrating AI into my OS that connects with the cloud, profiles me and helps me write better, analyzes my files etc, or reminds me what to do, not just "no", but "hell the fuck no". Surveillance capitalism is a cancer on computing, and I don't want it. Windows users will be getting this last example of AI whether they want it or not, but thankfully I use Linux.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-17T15:20:00+00:00

I really don't want Linux to go too mainstream, because I'm a selfish bastard, and, look what happened to ad blocking and the Internet in general when both of these two concepts went mainstream.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-14T23:59:25+00:00

You know what's funny? On one hand, they are obsessed with forcing the entire PC ecosystem fully into the cloud whether we users want this or not. And on the other hand, each new version of their software requires more and more hardware to even run. The point of relying on a central server somewhere, is that I should be able to get away with using a low-power potato client that can barely do anything more demanding than put information on my screen. Instead, you'll see full fat computers that will refuse to work if the Internet is down or the subscription has not been paid. I guess this is the quality of product that is shat out of the capitalist orifice.

Smart people know that this cloud obsession is not at all about saving the planet or making things cheaper for the user, but instead, grabbing users by the p**** and making us their b****. Considering what they will do with all the user's private information such as documents we work on, our private artistic creations, etc, the monthly fee to use the thing will be the least of our problems. :)

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-09-12T02:22:23+00:00

RE:Microsoft Edge. Remember boys and girls, when someone forces themself upon you against your will and doesn't take "no" for an answer, that is wrong. In fact in the real world we have specifically defined terms to describe this exact type of behavior.

It's too bad that so many websites are now explicitly working to make Firefox a second-class citizen online, probably for money. If you use Firefox you have to solve twice as many Captchas, and services like Nut-flix will refuse to serve you full quality video.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-31T00:09:43+00:00

It's oh-so fun, hilarious and satisfying to watch this gradually get worse... from a safe distance. (A.k.a Linux)

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-27T16:26:09+00:00

I wish all game developers would simultaneously make 20GB GPU memory be the bare minimum requirement to run their games tomorrow, in order to make all those (already unwanted) RTX4060s and 4060Ti's e-waste overnight.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-25T21:23:53+00:00

Do not advertise anything as unlimited. Doing so should be illegal.

Someone will take you up on the offer, and you cannot possibly provide unlimited service, so it's false advertising, plain and simple.

The term "unlimited" is a marketroid's best friend, but from my perspective, it screams dishonesty.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-25T14:21:30+00:00

For years I've wondered if a fluorescent tube would be lit by radiation, without any wires, e.g. just by being next to a lot of nuclear waste. The principle is the same as Radium, the only difference is that the radiation would have to be intense enough to pass through the glass of the bulb.

EDIT: Also I find it funny that they are worried about how to warn people about this stuff thousands of years from now, when governments spent fifty years dumping barrels of radioactive shit into the ocean from the 1940s through the 1990s. And no, they knew better than to do this, even back then. It's like they did not care about my generation or the next two or three, while now we're suddenly concerned about hundreds of generations in the future.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-24T17:14:10+00:00

What will it mean? Pay monthly to have every square millimeter of your privacy violated by Microsoft, and if you're really lucky, the machine will not shut down and refuse to operate at all in the event that the Internet is down for more than 24 hours.

Remember, they already pushed for this ten years ago. https://www.svg.com/101430/everything-microsoft-wrong-xbox-one/

For me, that was the point of no turning back. From my perspective it was sort of like the tech analogous of going on a date with someone who starts acting like a creep and a perve, in that they stupidly revealed their entire agenda and hand of cards, and now I know to stay as far away from them as possible. No amount of saying "I've changed", "I'm sorry", or "I won't do that again" will do one damn bit of good.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-19T18:29:39+00:00

imagine paying for a desktop you don't own and serves you ads all the work day long.

Consumers eat this shit up though. When this business model was exclusive to television and television was free and I could just record it all with my VCR and then fast forward the ads and keep the shows, I didn't protest, but now even games spam the gamer with ads and reserve the ability to disable/revoke all our purchases at any time for any reason. Backups are useless if they won't play without logging into an account, where the service was discontinued five years ago.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-18T17:17:00+00:00

Always makes me laugh when buying any storage, that the first thing they want to sell me to go with it, is data recovery services.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-18T01:38:54+00:00

And posting this publicly means that HP will finally get off their ass and do a hardware revision without the USB port, or where it is covered by the plastic shell.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-15T19:01:20+00:00

Cloud as a prison

At least in prison you don't have to pay rent.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-15T19:00:11+00:00

The whole point of Captchas is to punish those of us who refuse to allow Microsoft, Google and Facebook to stalk us while we browse the web. Normies who are signed in with the big three all day are exempt from Captchas, while my Firefox Linux computer gets the full treatment even though I have done nothing wrong. The upcoming web integrity malware will make this problem five times worse for people like me.

Think of it as sort of an analog to DRM; the entire point of DRM is to make sure that you can't keep the shit you buy, while the entire point of Captchas is to punish those of us who refuse to allow big tech the ability to stalk us all day.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-07T21:17:19+00:00

They'll just charge you $200 for Internet service instead.

No cable TV = less extortionate license fees for them from content cartels, but they still control your pipe to the Internet, so they can just raise the cost of that, and have record profits.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-04T22:10:52+00:00

I'd laugh if they weren't preparing to impose the exact same policies upon my self-built Linux computers when it comes to browsing the web, thanks to web integrity API.

"WEI has determined that the following components of your system do not pass attestation, please trash it and dutifully buy a new one." GPU, CPU, monitor.

And just a couple hours ago, I was watching someone torture an ancient Geforce 8800GT graphics card to see what modern games it would (could) possibly run at 30FPS, or lower. Gaming being the literal absolute worst case scenario for older computers.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-08-03T16:24:44+00:00

Can't speak from any personal experience with this company, but if this is indeed true, it serves as a warning for companies to not do their customers wrong, as there's no telling how it might backfire.

That said, I'm also surprised they didn't just use the copyright system and get the video pulled, because that's what all the real big and powerful companies do to silence their critics.

In addition to being mutated into a perpetual welfare scheme for corporations that signed artists 80 years ago, where the actual author/artist has literally been dead for 40 years, copyright has become a tool for companies to get anything taken down from the net that they don't like at any time, no questions asked.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-31T06:01:14+00:00

Stop resisting and using workarounds... Let them infest every inch of your screen with advertising, already!

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-31T05:57:28+00:00

I do wonder how America is going to solve this. They want to keep the price of power artificially high in order to make poor people suffer without sufficient A/C during the summer time, but they also want everyone to adopt these, which will indeed put a lot of strain on the grid.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-31T03:14:46+00:00

Blue screen of death.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-29T00:30:21+00:00

Ars Technica said it best. "They didn't buy the DLC." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/boeing-sold-safety-feature-that-could-have-prevented-737-max-crashes-as-an-option/

Yes, you can pay extra to unlock more capacity that is already part of your battery!

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-27T23:36:24+00:00

Ah yes, my absolute favoritest aspect of when a company makes news headlines because they don't want me to find things online, is how they draw my attention to something that I didn't even know existed before! BTW hot tip: nothing disappears from the Internet.

But Sony needn't fear, because 90% of the crap that comes out of the entertainment industry today isn't worth downloading for free anyway.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-27T20:44:03+00:00

"Big tech" is in the process of constructing, locking and loading a super mega anti-competitive BFG, and they will use it to lock out client computers from browsing the majority of the web if we happen to be running any unapproved (from their perspective) software or hardware. You know, the kind that can block ads, allow us to save content from webpages to local disk, and that doesn't quietly do stuff like this behind our backs. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/microsoft-resolves-edge-setting-that-was-leaking-websites-you-visit/

This is of particular concern for Linux users, because we are especially vulnerable to malware such as this, being a minority online. Actually this system will be so fine-grained that websites can choose to deny you service just because you're running, for example, an older video driver or you do not have secure boot switched on.

The mere fact that websites can even tell what OS or browser I'm running in the first place, is a bug. It's like if I got to know what kind of phone my friend is using when I dial their number. No reasonable person would think this information was any of my business, unless they (as in the human on the other side of the connection) willingly choose to tell me.

Also of note is that Google claims this is being implemented to stop bots, but that is ba-ba-bullshit, because all a bad actor has to do is connect their evil machine to their approved machine on the other side of the room by way of keyboard emulation. It's a power grab, a malicious and hostile one; If Google wanted to make the web a safer place for everyone, they could start by patching all the landfill Android phones they sell.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-26T19:10:07+00:00

People with even a partially functional brain, like me, were warning society that this was inevitable the minute they got EME malware to be part of web specifications. "But I must watch Nuttflex!!!"

So I would just like to take a moment here, and laugh at everyone who got played. Ha ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Jokes on them though, cuz the modern Internet sucks ass anyway.

Actually Microshaft wanted to implement something exactly like this way back in the day, named Palladium. But Microshaft was inept; they screwed up; they didn't care about the Internet at all, only ensuring their cash cow, Windows, remained dominant. So once they sank their competition in the browser market, they completely stopped caring about the browser. The web browser was simply a means to an end, after all. And this is why they have no say in how the Internet works today. But Google is much smarter and more malicious. When you are on top of the market, you don't stop, take a break, and count your money. You double down and exert maximal control. Competitors like Firefox and Chrome were able to catch up with and dethrone Microsoft because they didn't do what Google is doing today.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-25T12:40:45+00:00

If you think that it sucks now, just wait until they get this malware adopted in web standards.

https://www.osnews.com/story/136484/googles-nightmare-web-integrity-api-wants-a-drm-gatekeeper-for-the-web/

At least currently, you can continue to use your older devices when they get cut off from security updates three years after you buy them. But when this is rolled out, if you do not have a new enough piece of hardware that passes their integrity checks, websites will just tell you to fuck off. You won't even be able to download and install a random free edition of Linux to browse the web anymore, because they won't be certified compliant either, and so websites will likewise block you.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-24T14:42:25+00:00

This AI will ruin the open and public Internet. That's because more and more websites will lock themselves down to ensure that only humans can view them, to prevent machine scraping. And the fucking Captchas that the pricks devise get more hostile to actual humans every year, especially if you have a disability.

Have no fear though, as long as you stay logged into a Microsoft or Google account at all times while browsing, they will let you skip the captchas (because they know you are a human). So basically the guys who literally created the problem will also have control over the solution, and be laughing all the way to the bank while they exploit all your personal info even more than they do now.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-11T21:20:57+00:00

Watching Microsoft consume the games industry is a lot like watching cancer spread. Both are about as healthy for the patient in the long run. It's like people learned absolutely nothing from the introduction of the MalwareBox One ten years ago. https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/19/4445984/xbox-one-policy-reversal-changes

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-10T17:50:56+00:00

If you think the "problem" of users running unsupported versions of Windows is bad now, it's gonna get ten times worse when Windows 10 support ends and a lot of machines can't run Windows 11.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-05T17:08:53+00:00

Last I checked, power from the grid is not cheap either. What you will wind up doing here, is giving them more of an excuse to inflate your already obscene air conditioning bill in the summer up to new astronomical heights. I mean this is what will happen when everyone transitions to EV's.

You know what the USA is currently doing with groceries now? That being running an experiment to see just how much you are willing to pay for food at the grocery store? Well, they'll do the same thing to your power bill as more people transition to EV's.. How much do you really want to (can you afford to) keep the lights on and the temperature in your dwelling below a hundred degrees in the summer time, anyway?

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-03T21:14:28+00:00

Electronic door locks are probably the dumbest shit ever. Well maybe Internet connected door locks take the cake, but still.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-02T03:28:22+00:00

Another reason I do not fear robots, is software quality. So many programs break/bug out when the user does something as simple as provide them excessive or spurious input.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/418914/dont-believe-the-hype-that-grub-backspace-bug-wasnt-a-big-deal.html

We've also seen bugs where a simple text message can crash or hijack a phone.

So in the future, if robots do declare war on humanity, all the humans have to do, is exploit a buffer overflow.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-07-01T15:28:26+00:00

I'm with the group that firmly believes AI will never declare war on humanity. Instead, it will be used by the self-appointed people at the top (governments, rich) to more effectively control and exploit the poor.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/amazon_echo_disabled_allegation/

This is what the future will be more like, except that instead of all your shit getting shut down due to a baseless accusation from a human being, the process will be 100% automated, when an AI flagged your profile for some random arbitrary reason.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-06-28T17:24:29+00:00

All authors of GPL software seriously need to play hardball with Red Hat/IBM and notify them of termination of license for breach of the GPL.

Something like: "You are blatantly and willfully violating both the spirit and the letter of the terms that govern my software, by adding additional terms and punishing the users downstream who redestribute it's source code. Stop shipping it immediately."

That would be bitchin'. If they continue shipping and ignore you, everybody sue them all at once; everyone who can, that is.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-06-28T17:18:30+00:00

All authors of GPL software seriously need to play hardball with Red Hat/IBM and notify them of termination of license for breach of the GPL.

Something like: "You are blatantly and willfully violating both the spirit and the letter of the terms that govern my software, by adding additional terms and punishing the users downstream who redestribute it's source code. Stop shipping it immediately."

That would be bitchin'. If they continue shipping and ignore you, everybody sue them all at once; everyone who can, that is.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-06-22T00:54:18+00:00

How nice for them. I won't be engaging with that website any longer. Hopefully a substantial chunk of former users feel the same way.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-06-18T17:46:23+00:00

Wrestling with the idea of replacing the battery in my ancient Zenfone 2 Z00a. It is from 2015, but has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, so should still be way more than good enough.

Myocarditis-Man · 2023-06-18T17:45:05+00:00

This is good and all, but we still need a way to get affordable batteries from reputable manufacturers. I don't want to carry the $5 knock-off maybe-a-fireball in my pocket, thanks.

Myocarditis-Man