so i finally got around to reading the privacy policy for ms edge and uhhhh its not good
when you use edge for the first time (and never again afterwards) youll get a prompt asking you to "make your edge experience more useful" without actually describing what that means at all. its on by default and if you dont uncheck it, MS will slurp up your entire browsing history.
i've banned other browsers from corporate environments for less egregious privacy violations.
when you use edge for the first time (and never again afterwards) youll get a prompt asking you to "make your edge experience more useful" without actually describing what that means at all. its on by default and if you dont uncheck it, MS will slurp up your entire browsing history.
i've banned other browsers from corporate environments for less egregious privacy violations.
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/g/‘s Tech Memes
Photo
im really starting to believe this meme
heres the rundown:
as ai gets better you can run it on cheaper hardware. it also increase in fidelity, meaning easier and better deepfakes or whatever youre doing with it.
people in charge dont like the idea of giving that power to the common man.
as a result they have to make it impossible to run AI on local hardware. the only way they want you to use AI is via a service that they control, so that you cant translate hitler speeches or AI generate a video of trump fellating bill clinton. (you dont need to generate that. it happened :3c )
so they decided to restrict the hardware. the biggest manufacturer of consumer RAM, Micron, has exited the consumer market. they owned a lot of brands including crucial. i think gskill was also micron.
between AI companies buying up all the ram and micron exiting, both regular computer ram and videocard vram have exploded in price, upwards of 500%. this makes it very expensive and difficult to run large AI models at home.
this is already horrifying, but what makes this truly apocalyptic is that modern devs absolutely suck at writing software that is not ram intensive.
writing an application for multiple platforms is hard. If you want to support windows, mac, android, and ios you have to write four separate applications.
the way around this problem is to write webapps- basically websites that are stored locally on your computer and run as a program on your computer. this way you just need one codebase for every operating system, and its easier to build a website than it is to write a native application.
the downside: webapps are VERY ram hungry. discord is a webapp. it easily uses half a gig of ram. whatsapp used to be a native application. it would use maybe 250mb of ram. meta recently scrapped the whatsapp native application and have switched to maintaining a webapp. the new webapp version now uses upwards of a gigabyte of ram (4 times more ram than before.)
what this means is that users are getting squeezed. you cant upgrade your ram because the upgrade would cost like 500$, but also your computer sucks because you have like half as much ram as you need
heres the rundown:
as ai gets better you can run it on cheaper hardware. it also increase in fidelity, meaning easier and better deepfakes or whatever youre doing with it.
people in charge dont like the idea of giving that power to the common man.
as a result they have to make it impossible to run AI on local hardware. the only way they want you to use AI is via a service that they control, so that you cant translate hitler speeches or AI generate a video of trump fellating bill clinton. (you dont need to generate that. it happened :3c )
so they decided to restrict the hardware. the biggest manufacturer of consumer RAM, Micron, has exited the consumer market. they owned a lot of brands including crucial. i think gskill was also micron.
between AI companies buying up all the ram and micron exiting, both regular computer ram and videocard vram have exploded in price, upwards of 500%. this makes it very expensive and difficult to run large AI models at home.
this is already horrifying, but what makes this truly apocalyptic is that modern devs absolutely suck at writing software that is not ram intensive.
writing an application for multiple platforms is hard. If you want to support windows, mac, android, and ios you have to write four separate applications.
the way around this problem is to write webapps- basically websites that are stored locally on your computer and run as a program on your computer. this way you just need one codebase for every operating system, and its easier to build a website than it is to write a native application.
the downside: webapps are VERY ram hungry. discord is a webapp. it easily uses half a gig of ram. whatsapp used to be a native application. it would use maybe 250mb of ram. meta recently scrapped the whatsapp native application and have switched to maintaining a webapp. the new webapp version now uses upwards of a gigabyte of ram (4 times more ram than before.)
what this means is that users are getting squeezed. you cant upgrade your ram because the upgrade would cost like 500$, but also your computer sucks because you have like half as much ram as you need
skipper's musings
im really starting to believe this meme heres the rundown: as ai gets better you can run it on cheaper hardware. it also increase in fidelity, meaning easier and better deepfakes or whatever youre doing with it. people in charge dont like the idea of giving…
how i see this playing out:
1. butlerian jihad: everything is done to kill AI. the bubble bursts. openAI dies in a massive fire. oracle takes a huge hit, is bailed out, and gets bought out by MS or palantir. MS takes a big hit and is bailed out by the government. any interest in local models dies because git repos dont want to get legal heat for hosting code that can be used for crime or something. they'll probably write laws making it illegal to gen images of children or deepfakes and that'll kill stablediffusion. services like midjourney and novelai die because payment processors dont want to touch that.
2. hardware prices stay sky high until "local" computers die. the only pc you can buy is a thin client that connects to a server that does all of your computing for you. you have zero privacy. windows becomes a truly online only operating system as a service. you pay monthly to "connect your computer to the windows ecosystem" and if you dont pay your computer becomes a useless brick.
3. prices drop and AI is made illegal in some weird way. distributing local models that can be used to do something "bad" becomes a crime. all models are capable of telling you how to build a bomb or generating obscene images and as a result generative ai dies.
1. butlerian jihad: everything is done to kill AI. the bubble bursts. openAI dies in a massive fire. oracle takes a huge hit, is bailed out, and gets bought out by MS or palantir. MS takes a big hit and is bailed out by the government. any interest in local models dies because git repos dont want to get legal heat for hosting code that can be used for crime or something. they'll probably write laws making it illegal to gen images of children or deepfakes and that'll kill stablediffusion. services like midjourney and novelai die because payment processors dont want to touch that.
2. hardware prices stay sky high until "local" computers die. the only pc you can buy is a thin client that connects to a server that does all of your computing for you. you have zero privacy. windows becomes a truly online only operating system as a service. you pay monthly to "connect your computer to the windows ecosystem" and if you dont pay your computer becomes a useless brick.
3. prices drop and AI is made illegal in some weird way. distributing local models that can be used to do something "bad" becomes a crime. all models are capable of telling you how to build a bomb or generating obscene images and as a result generative ai dies.
skipper's musings
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mozilla-New-CEO-AI
not mad at all. mozilla poisoned firefox when they started getting really gay and now we are watching them walk it behind the shed. its not been a good browser since version 3
they are currently on version 146
they are currently on version 146
skipper's musings
Get-AppxPackage -allusers *copilot* | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers Get-AppxPackage -allusers *startexperience* | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers Get-AppxPackage -allusers *webexperience* | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage -allusers *Microsoft.YourPhone* | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
they actually have the audacity to grey out the uninstall button as if they think they get to make decisions about what executes on my computer.
they actually have the audacity to grey out the uninstall button as if they think they get to make decisions about what executes on my computer.
chrome canary (the alpha channel) has now implemented vertical tabs
this is very exciting to me because vertical tabs are a must have for me and the only browser that currently supports it properly is brave
this is very exciting to me because vertical tabs are a must have for me and the only browser that currently supports it properly is brave
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the channelblocker extension hasnt been updated since the beginning of this year. certain features slowly stopped working and it appears that its now finally dead. i had stuff like "reacts" and "situation is" blocked so i would not see video noscripts with those words in my feed but they are now appearing
cue taps on a horn
cue taps on a horn
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skipper's musings
the channelblocker extension hasnt been updated since the beginning of this year. certain features slowly stopped working and it appears that its now finally dead. i had stuff like "reacts" and "situation is" blocked so i would not see video noscripts with those…
update: we are so back
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ytblock-block-any-content/nedcanggplmbbgmlpcjiafgjcpdimpea
this one works even better tbh
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ytblock-block-any-content/nedcanggplmbbgmlpcjiafgjcpdimpea
this one works even better tbh
Google
YTBlock - Block any content from YouTube™ - Chrome Web Store
Block videos, comments, channels and much more!
CRISPR/GNUGUN Coopernetties
Photo
not sure if ive told this story here but a couple years back i went out to best buy to buy a tv. every single was was some kind of internet connected "smart" tv. amazon fire. android, roku, whatever. i dont want any of that. i want a large, decent looking display that connects to a small computer running linux that will play videos from plex/jellyfin and youtube without ads.
i cant find such a device. after a few minutes of looking around, probably with a look on my face that says "Kaczynski was right" an employee approached me to ask if i was finding everything alright. i was not.
"do you have a tv that doesnt spy on me?"
"im not sure what you mean?"
"i want a tv that does not have a bunch of extra garbage. i want just a tv."
"oh, well as you can see we have Amazon (TM) Alexa (R) powered Fire (R) TVs, Roku (TM) powered TVs... this one over here is compatible with Apple (TM) Siri (R)."
"All of those spy on me."
"Well some of them have microphones in the remotes for easy searching for content instead of using the remote to try to text search but this Fire (R) TV does not."
"i don't think you understand. i just want a tv. Only a tv."
"you can play movies and watch tv on all of these, sir."
"do you have a tv that does not connect to the internet?"
"if you don't connect it to the internet you would not be able to use any of the services"
"i dont want to use the services."
"oh just dont connect it to the internet then."
"that's not what want. i want a tv without the 'smart' garbage."
the guy genuinely could not understand. i felt like i was in a ray bradburry book.
i cant find such a device. after a few minutes of looking around, probably with a look on my face that says "Kaczynski was right" an employee approached me to ask if i was finding everything alright. i was not.
"do you have a tv that doesnt spy on me?"
"im not sure what you mean?"
"i want a tv that does not have a bunch of extra garbage. i want just a tv."
"oh, well as you can see we have Amazon (TM) Alexa (R) powered Fire (R) TVs, Roku (TM) powered TVs... this one over here is compatible with Apple (TM) Siri (R)."
"All of those spy on me."
"Well some of them have microphones in the remotes for easy searching for content instead of using the remote to try to text search but this Fire (R) TV does not."
"i don't think you understand. i just want a tv. Only a tv."
"you can play movies and watch tv on all of these, sir."
"do you have a tv that does not connect to the internet?"
"if you don't connect it to the internet you would not be able to use any of the services"
"i dont want to use the services."
"oh just dont connect it to the internet then."
"that's not what want. i want a tv without the 'smart' garbage."
the guy genuinely could not understand. i felt like i was in a ray bradburry book.
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