baggins
@baggins@beehaw.org
Music (mainly prog rock) and veggie loving, geeky cat butler living in Hertfordshire UK. A lover of all things LOTR (since I first read it over 50 years ago) scifi and what have you. Ex soldier (Royal Artillery) and other trades ;-)
- Comment on EU could target ultra low-cost e-tailers like Shein and Temu with package handling fee or import tax 2 weeks ago:
Good, the less cheap tat the better.
- Comment on Netflix used to not have ads, now it’s ‘celebrating’ two years with them 5 weeks ago:
Welcome to cable* TV!
*With or without wires.
- Comment on Tech Giants Are Set to Spend $200 Billion This Year Chasing AI 1 month ago:
Two posts up from this, is a post about a complete OS on a 1.44MB floppy.
- Comment on Google tests showing full recipes right in search results 2 months ago:
Great. More 3 page life stories about someone’s partner and their fur babies and puppers (I hate that term with a passion) before you get to the recipe.
Sticking with DDG but going to retest Kagi, as DDG seems to be slipping.
- Comment on Here’s how much Disney Plus will charge to share your password 2 months ago:
Disney Plus says adding an “extra member” to an ad-supported plan will cost $6.99 monthly, with that price going up to $9.99 for its ad-free plan.
- Comment on “Fascists”: Elon Musk responds to proposed fines for disinformation on X 3 months ago:
He should know, as the purveyor of wankpanzers and all.
- Comment on Phone companies to be asked to help tackle rise in snatch thefts 3 months ago:
Some of the responsibility needs to go onto owners though - you see people walking around with £1000+ phones like they are a slice of pizza. You wouldn’t walk around with that amount of cash on in your hand.
I suspect a good proportion of those don’t even have find my phone or whatever switched on. Could it not be on by default, or would that be a nightmare?
And FFS people, stop putting your credit cards whatever in your phone case. Put a password on it whilst you’re at it.
- Comment on New Trump Book Threatens To Jail Zuckerberg, Putting Zuck’s Groveling Letter In New Light 3 months ago:
So, Trump is threatening to jail himself. Makes sense.
- Comment on Smart sous vide cooker to start charging $2/month for 10-year-old companion app 4 months ago:
These bastards want to scrounge every single penny they can. They deserve to go under.
- Comment on Fully-automatic robot dentist performs world's first human procedure 4 months ago:
At this point, the (human) dentist and patient can discuss what needs doing – but once those decisions are made, the robotic dental surgeon takes over. It plans out the operation, then jolly well goes ahead and does it.>
Whether you change your mind or not!
- Comment on The Pentagon Wants to Spend $141 Billion on a Doomsday Machine 4 months ago:
Christ on a cracker. We are better than this. I suspect there are a lot of people getting ready to grease their palms here.
- Comment on Samsung expects profits to jump by more than 1,400% 5 months ago:
We can look forward to cheaper phones then.
We can, can’t we?
- Comment on Google is ready to fill free streaming TV channels with ads 6 months ago:
Free Ad Supported Television? So in other words commercial television.
Or just call it what it really is, an Ad Supported Service. ASS.
- Comment on Adults and teens pick dumbphones to curb social media addiction 6 months ago:
Like here for instance? They could always set up the phone to only allow set times on certain apps. However, of you can set a time limit, you can also unset a time limit. Not having the apps and games in front of you is the key thing.
You wouldn’t expect a smoker to walk about with fags and lighter in their pocket and not touch them, or an alcoholic with a half bottle of vodka in their bag, calling them all day.
We’ve been led into a world of ‘must have’ apps, blogs and an always online culture.
It’ll do us a power of good to step back from that. Beehaw, PieFed and Vivaldi Social are the only ones I keep now.
Spending a lot less time online and reading a hell of a lot more. And I feel better for it. Less stressed and more relaxed. I don’t have the peer pressure that young kids get though. Any that tells me I ‘must’ use a certain app can do one and they get a lecture on online security and conspiracy theories to go with it. They soon give up 😉
- Comment on Binit is bringing AI to trash 6 months ago:
I can actually see this as being useful further down the line. It can suggest which bin to put things into.
In The Expanse they have bins that they drop anything into for recycling - Binit could be sat at the top of a similar system and just steer items to the relevant bin. Anything not positively identified or mixed goes to the general waste bin.
- Comment on Trump ‘seriously considering’ pardoning Julian Assange | News | gazette.com 6 months ago:
Not sure if that’s top of his ‘To Do’ list rifgt now. Or indeed anytime, he just wants to grab a bit more attention.
- Comment on Over 90 malicious Android apps with 5.5M installs found on Google Play 6 months ago:
Doesn’t look like it.
- Comment on Amazon plans to give Alexa an AI overhaul — and a monthly subscription price 6 months ago:
I certainly will- thank you!
- Comment on The Samsung Galaxy Ring might come with a subscription 6 months ago:
But is it the one ring to rule them all?
- Comment on Amazon plans to give Alexa an AI overhaul — and a monthly subscription price 6 months ago:
I wonder if ‘basic’ Alexa will stay. At home we find it genuinely useful for setting timers and alarms etc. my wife has an obsession with the weather and is always asking for weather info for our area - she doesn’t drive and works in an office so it’s beyond me.
We have Samsung phones so could resort to Bixby.
The only other thing we use Alexa for is playing music although my Sonos system has it’s own voice control for that, although I suspect that may go in a couple of years when they stop supporting my kit, it’s five years old now.
I’d rather not resort to Google.
- Comment on Windows 11 KB5036980 update goes live with Start Menu ads 7 months ago:
I’m on the insider build and haven’t seen any of this. If I do then I’m off. That’s a red.line as far as I’m concerned.
I’ll load up EndeavourOS (it’s already on my laptop) and they can shove it. Pity as it was genuinely getting good. So many things that worked seamlessly and effortlessly compared to some of the Linux stuff.
But I’ll not have ads in my OS.
- Comment on New UK law targets “despicable individuals” who create AI sex deepfakes 8 months ago:
Good luck with that. Meanwhile MPs are sending dick picks on WhatsApp.
- Comment on How Ember is building an all-electric intercity bus network in the UK 8 months ago:
For those of us in UK, that’s juts over £11 million.
😉
- Comment on 32°N’s liquid-lens sunglasses transform into reading glasses with a swipe 8 months ago:
Or get transition lenses with a pair of bi focals.
- Comment on Threads’ fediverse beta opens to share your posts on Mastodon, too 8 months ago:
They can shove it where the sun don’t shine.
- Comment on The Terrifying A.I. Scam That Uses Your Loved One’s Voice: A couple in the U.S. got a call from relatives who were being held ransom. Their voices—like many others these days—had been cloned 9 months ago:
I’m currently enrolled in a Cyber Security course and my work for today is to consider an emerging threat and research ways to combat it.
That’s my topic sorted then - excellent timing :-)
- Comment on Meta says it’s deleting all Oculus accounts at the end of the month 9 months ago:
Somewhere in the small print it probably say you only purchased the right to use it, and they can delete or remove at any time they choose.