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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Not buy their products. Drag them on social media. Give interest to news stories about the product’s users, not the figurehead of one of the vendors, so the news media focuses on them rather than the distraction. Reach out to your politicians and your friends to discuss how product failures are the result of the company embracing AI and don’t forget to highlight the greed that brought us to this fascist economic system. Use, donate to, or even offer your skills to non-LLM FOSS alternatives. Spend your dollars on companies with scruples. Build your own home lab, give up on all technology, get really into self-sufficiency, and go live in the woods to escape the whole system.

    I don’t know… something other than giving in. Literally anything other than that.




  • In same camp of supporting the sentiment, I played this out in my head.

    Okay, but what if they’re open carrying a large gun?
    [Bad outcome]

    Okay, what if they open carry and have a body camera (that they turn off while in the restroom, obviously)?
    [Bad outcome and ignored by media - bad outcome]

    Okay, what if there’s a group that’s open carrying and have body cameras?
    [Bitch, did you just determine they had to form a militia to go to the bathroom away from home? Sigh.]

    I don’t know the solution, other than for people to mind their own fucking business.




  • Can openers is what did it for me.

    In 2015 I needed a new manual can opener. The local big-box stores had two basic styles. A cheap, all metal one that was just stamped from a single sheet, and a more expensive one with better handles.
    The more expensive one had previously rusted and began to look nasty within a few years.
    Amazon had a bunch of different styles at less than the price point of the more expensive one.

    I bought one. It was fine. I didn’t love the operation. It cut the whole top off from the side, rather than from the top in a downwards cut. The sharp edges were on the can rather than on the lid. It would catch the paper labels and sometimes wad them up into the can while you cut. Cans with no air space would leak when opened.

    Anyway. Replaced it in 2019. Amazon still had a broad selection, but all except for obvious crap was as expensive as the local big box store’s expensive option. Wound up going to a smaller local(ish) bulk foods store and bought a cheapo restaurant one for less than Amazon’s/the big box store’s similar offerings. Minimal rusting to date.






  • I used to have a TCL soundbar.

    In addition to being extremely mediocre, it promised to integrate with my WiFi so that music could be airplayed through it. After adding it to my WiFi, it still broadcast the open ‘setup’ WiFi network.

    If you joined the setup network, you could SSH into the soundbar as root without a password and dump the dhcp.conf file, which would give anyone access to my home WiFi network. Other TCL models also allowed for root via SSH, but used 12345678 as the password. A skilled hacker could just bot these via wardriving and turn them into network listeners.

    It may have still broadcast the setup network because I blocked the device from accessing the internet. I only ever went poking around on it because I noticed that the setup network kept getting set to the same channels as my home network and it was causing interference. I eventually just factory reset the device so it had no information on it at all.
    After the umpteenth time of not being found by my TV, a hard reset killed it. Just got stuck booting and never recovered.

    Anyway - crap brand. Sad day for Sony TV fans.



  • Yeeeaahh… At my org our default security policy for all of our site collections prevents sharing outside of our domain, and requires managed devices to access our SharePoint.
    To share things outside of our org via SharePoint, a site collection with a different security policy has to be created, and only admins can control the sharing. We can only share with people who have some sort of identity service that can federate with ours.
    No user is granted above contribute access, and sharing is turned off. (People can share links, but they cannot change the permissions of an item to share it.).
    Theoretically it’s possible that a SharePoint can be created that allows public access, but to my knowledge we do not do that.

    OneDrive files cannot even be downloaded by external parties (although they can be viewed in the browser!), and Teams workspaces are also not accessible externally unless by special circumstance.

    I would imagine the federal government is… well, hopefully at least as locked down as my work.


  • You don’t accidentally publish the list.

    At very large organizations, sharing files easily is a pain in the ass. The available tools are usually tied to your Active Directory, which means you have to know who you’re sharing with, or at least have some idea of what permission groups allow what access.

    To share documents appropriately, you still have to do the hard work of finding out who and what permission groups you should be sharing with, even if that means coordinating with other IT teams to make sure you understand their permissions structures properly.

    Or you half-ass it, and put the document somewhere public and hope the link doesn’t get shared beyond your control (or found).

    I guess I’m saying it’s not intimidation, accident, or resistance — just laziness and stupidity. Both of which are not unfamiliar ground for this administration.




  • I was going to ask “What’s your point?” but then I realized that this post isn’t even anti-AI.

    The text of this post highlights anticompetitive business practices that have nothing to do with OpenAI’s business model.
    Straight up - they can’t even use the silicon wafers.

    This is just market manipulation to harm their competition and possibly engage in stock market fuckery. (Micron, which stands to make billions, is largely owned by U.S. based wealth management companies.)

    OpenAI and its business partners stand atop a massive bubble that they are desperate to not have pop. I’m horrified, but kind of impressed at the maneuver.

    You’re throwing stones in the wrong direction.


  • The social contract is that we do not tolerate intolerance. If someone is intolerant or they tolerate intolerance, they are violating the social contract.

    If she’s calling for tolerance of his views (she is), or is clear that she’s tolerant of his views (again, she is), then she’s breaking the social contract.

    As his wife, she would know his medical history, and would know if he underwent a personality shift. As a politician, she’s expected to represent all of her constituents and have sound judgement, especially in matters of conflicts of interest.
    There’s no more story to know or no mitigating factors. Throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.