XLE
@XLE@piefed.social
- Comment on Amazon won’t release Fire Sticks that support sideloading anymore 5 hours ago:
There’s some inherent value of having competing companies trying make their Smart Stick an option on any TV. Amazon is more likely to sue, I don’t know, Samsung if their TVs forced you to log into a Samsung account before using the Amazon stick. The average consumer sure won’t be able to sue.
(I don’t know how restrictive smart TVs are, though, and at this point I’m afraid to find out.)
- Comment on Why Do We Tell Ourselves Scary Stories About AI? | Quanta Magazine 4 days ago:
I think more people would like this article if they took the time to read it. The entire thing can’t be summarized easily but this line was great
After talking to experts, I was convinced there’s no reason to fear AIs developing a will to live, and then tricking or destroying us to avoid shutdown and take over the world. Unless, of course, we tell them to.
And
The chatbots, in these experiments, sound fairly normal. The humans, on the other hand, sound a little unhinged.
So it’s all roleplaying experiments. (I swear in another article, I read AI getting told to be a better roleplayer would have a positive effect, while telling it to be a better mathematician would make it roleplay harder but work worse.) And that’s the real danger: people being dumb about the parlor trick
There’s a lot of magical thinking about AI. But it must be said that if you let these systems loose in the real world and they have access to your bank account, even if they’re just role-playing, it could still have catastrophic effects.
- Comment on Microsoft admits its recent server-side "update" broke vital Windows 11 Start menu function 1 week ago:
QA is when you vibe code tests, right
- Comment on Thousands of users got affected by OneDrive unstoppable spam on Windows, Android, Mac 1 week ago:
My solution to this is never using OneDrive, which (terrible as it is) can be installed on Windows 10/11.
- Comment on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google under investor pressure to disclose site-specific data center water and power consumption 1 week ago:
What’s more likely: investors suddenly started caring about the environment, or investors are looking for ways to stop losing money on an unprofitable venture?
My bet is on the latter, especially with the context the article provides, and they’re just looking for a green parachute.
- Comment on The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong 1 week ago:
This piece needs a conflict of interest statement; the author is a social media (BlueSky) director telling us social media is unfairly maligned.
- Comment on Denuvo has been broken, company promises countermeasures against new DRM bypasses — zero-day game releases become norm as security concerns mount over hypervisor-based bypass 2 weeks ago:
The problem with well-coded malware is it won’t execute unless it thinks it’s not being watched. And based on everything else in this article, it sounds like you’d also be opening your computer up to other parties exploiting security holes in the process.
So a separate computer might work, but it would have to stay separate.
- Comment on Denuvo has been broken, company promises countermeasures against new DRM bypasses — zero-day game releases become norm as security concerns mount over hypervisor-based bypass 2 weeks ago:
Nasty stuff I don’t want on my computer either. As an amateur, was really hoping the cracks would remove it, not circumvent it…
- Comment on Denuvo has been broken, company promises countermeasures against new DRM bypasses — zero-day game releases become norm as security concerns mount over hypervisor-based bypass 2 weeks ago:
This crack sounds too scary to use. Impressive, but scary.
As usual for any DRM company or publisher, Irdeto also claimed that downloading games with the bypass is a security concern, but this time around, the company has a valid point.
Using the hypervisor bypass, even in its latest incarnation, requires users to… [install] a community-made hypervisor (HV) with Windows running on top of it. This HV fakes responses to the checks that Denuvo makes, and runs with higher permissions… than the operating system itself and has full, nearly untraceable access to hardware and software.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think they’re using sunglasses (the picture is from another article), but maybe. Unfortunately, these things also come in a regular and prescription, although I bet the rented models aren’t.
It’s a little harder to tell whether somebody is wearing new glasses for the first time.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Those glasses must only be as good as the WiFi they’re connected to, right? There must be a way to block signals to them or identify which ones are transmitting.
- Comment on Mozilla and Mila announce strategic research partnership to advance open source and sovereign AI capabilities | The Mozilla Blog 3 weeks ago:
This is where your donations to the Mozilla Foundation end up.
Google funds the development of Firefox, but people who click the Donate button fund this.
- Comment on Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever 3 weeks ago:
To be fair to Dell, Apple’s high-resolution displays might have toned-down resolutions too. The Mac Neo ships with a lower default resolution than what it can fully handle, if I understand the settings right.
- Comment on Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever 3 weeks ago:
The least expensive current-gen MacBook after the Neo is $1100 (less if you buy a previous generation, which is apparently common practice); the Dell in the article is $1750.
Apple’s other products are expensive, but this is a whole new level of it.
- Comment on Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever 3 weeks ago:
With a starting price over $1500, they’re competing with Apple prices too
- Comment on A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog 3 weeks ago:
Not sure why this is downloaded. Mullvad is an example of a company that has fought like hell to earn its reputation as a trustworthy VPN provider, which is something that every provider (especially Mozilla) should aspire to.
- Comment on Apple begins age checks in the UK with latest iOS update 3 weeks ago:
I have my doubts (see responses for similar arguments about systemd adding an age field).
- Authoritarian governments are not appeased by corporations that bend over backwards for them, and
- Apple is in the business of making money, not keeping people private.
- Comment on Apple begins age checks in the UK with latest iOS update 3 weeks ago:
Remember when Apple used to fight surveillance?
Now they’re jumping to comply with rules that don’t even exist yet.
App stores and mobile operating systems are not covered by the Online Safety Act, but Ofcom, the UK media and telecoms regulator, welcomed Apple’s move on Wednesday.
- Comment on A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog 3 weeks ago:
This is not white-label Mullvad. This is a new service running on servers that have never been vetted.
That isn’t something you trust just because a company tells you to trust it. In a best-case scenario you start with zero trust, and it gets built out from there. (And this assumes Mozilla isn’t operating from a trust deficit).
- Comment on Microsoft May Remove Windows 11 Online Login Requirement 3 weeks ago:
I trust them somewhat, because it would be in Microsoft’s best interest to maintain a monopoly on the OS market and to appease their business customers. Admitting their mistakes also puts them in a more vulnerable position than if they’d just pretended nothing was the matter.
- Comment on Planned 10-gigawatt Softbank data center in Ohio might be the largest in the world — will require a $33 billion natural gas plant, equivalent to nine nuclear reactors 3 weeks ago:
Softbank, the company known for good investments.
Like WeWork.
- Comment on Meta is having trouble with rogue AI agents 4 weeks ago:
“Screw it, buy the vibe-coded social network that’s literally nothing but AI bots.”
- Comment on Europe takes first step to banning AI-generated child sexual abuse images 4 weeks ago:
AI-generated revenge porn of adults is already sexual abuse. Hopefully you, Iconoclast, agree that such a thing is already reprehensible. Now hopefully you understand why it’s bad when it’s done to real children.
The AI sphere is full of people who hate consent: Sam Altman the sister rapist, Eli Yudkowsky the serial abuser, Elon Musk who I don’t even know where to start, etc. I know you love AI an unhealthy amount, but this is not a hill you have to die on.
- Comment on Europe takes first step to banning AI-generated child sexual abuse images 5 weeks ago:
Between this and the Chat Control rollback, Europe has been on a roll with the good choices for a change.
The companies generating this stuff should have been in the crosshairs from the beginning.
- Comment on Spotify tests letting users directly customize their Taste Profile 5 weeks ago:
You beat me to the punch on slop. I would also like to opt out out of all the ghost bands Spotify assembled so they wouldn’t have to pay royalties to artists who joined the site
- Comment on Meta to charge advertisers a fee to offset Europe's digital taxes 5 weeks ago:
The lesser known, far less sexy, second step of enshittification. But at this point, it’s hard to imagine anybody using Facebook for advertising… except maybe to a local, older demographic.
- Comment on AI Bots Appeared After Reddit Partnered with OpenAI 5 weeks ago:
True, but it used to be made up by people looking for an ego boost. Now there’s an additional monetary incentive behind it. Look no further than Twitter for an example of that.
- Comment on The Silicon Battlefield: Autonomous Weapons and the Next Era of Warfare 5 weeks ago:
The battlefield is now firmly in the age of AI-driven robotic autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).
I’m not sure about “firmly,” but if you’re confused about the acronym, L stands for “lethal,” not “robotic”
Images in this article were created using AI.
Nice disclaimer, but the top of the article would have been a more appropriate place to warn us
- Comment on AI Bots Appeared After Reddit Partnered with OpenAI 5 weeks ago:
This post makes some really, really compelling points for AI bots being brought intentionally onto Reddit. All the coincidental features like being able to hide your post history. Seems like a terrible idea for long-term profits even. After all, if you’ve helping third-party bot spammers to hide their behavior too, how are you going to keep selling your content to OpenAI? They’re like a zombie, they need real people to feed off.
And I don’t think this article even touches on a separate mistake: letting people monetize their content.
- Comment on Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience 1 month ago:
Link to Tom’s Hardware article for reference?
6GB is a lot. I thought these things only tweaked registry settings to disable things, not remove them.