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Ottomateeverything

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Ottomateeverything ,

The only scripts I’ve seen still leave a giant empty box at the top… Are there any that fix this too?

New “Recall” feature in Windows 11 is a privacy nightmare (www.theverge.com)

The new “Recall” feature really does look good on paper, but the taking in mind that it catalogues almost everything you do on your computer, it could turn out to be a privacy nightmare. “logging things you do in apps, tracking communications in live meetings, remembering all websites you’ve visited for research, and...

Ottomateeverything ,

it includes logging things you do in apps, tracking communications in live meetings, remembering all websites you’ve visited for research, and more.

Yeah, uh, no thank you.

Is Microsoft this out of touch? Or are we doomed to be constantly monitored by our corporate overlords?

Seems we’re just still charging directly into 1984.

Ottomateeverything ,

where it won’t obscure passwords. But, surprise, it will obscure DRM content

Yeah, we all know where the priorities really are.

How have our consumer protections gone so fucking far.

Ottomateeverything ,

At least that makes sense and has a logical reason

Ottomateeverything ,

I think you’re missing the point. The pic is of Disney’s star wars space ship themed hotel. The idea isn’t to make people think they’re in space, it’s to give the experience of being on a space ship.

Not to say it’s a good idea, I think the spaceship hotel thing is kinda weird. It sort of makes sense at Disney, but you’re only in it for part of the day, and it still failed. The idea of staying in there outside of Disney would be… Odd… But maybe he’s just saying Disney should bring a ship into the park? Lol?

But yeah, they’re not trying to hoodwink anyone into thinking they’re in space.

Ottomateeverything ,

Not that I’ve seen, but I know some people who somehow missed the video, and he doesn’t link to it on the website so:

youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE

Ottomateeverything ,

Glad I’m not the only one… The hell is it doing after epic?

Ottomateeverything ,

I bet if such a law existed in less than a month all those AI developers would very quickly abandon the “oh no you see it’s impossible to completely avoid hallucinations for you see the math is just too complex tee hee” and would actually fix this.

Nah, this problem is actually too hard to solve with LLMs. They don’t have any structure or understanding of what they’re saying so there’s no way to write better guardrails… Unless you build some other system that tries to make sense of what the LLM says, but that approaches the difficulty of just building an intelligent agent in the first place.

So no, if this law came into effect, people would just stop using AI. It’s too cavalier. And imo, they probably should stop for cases like this unless it has direct human oversight of everything coming out of it. Which also, probably just wouldn’t happen.

Ottomateeverything ,

My experience is dated, but figured I’d share it in case no one else has any input.

I owned a few Motorola Android phones before and after the Google involvement. I think my most recent purchase was 2015.

At that time, they were extremely “pure android” with very few additions beyond the stock experience. The things they added were way ahead of their time - I still think those devices had the best “always on” display implementation to this day, and they did it way before it became a norm.

Their software and update support was rivaling Google at the time, and most other manufacturers were still in the days of 2 years of updates if you’re lucky.

They just stopped making phones it seemed like. I ended up moving towards Pixels over the years, but Moto is the one company that would tempt me to switch back. That or maybe HTC but they’re dead.

Hope you get a more recent answer - I didn’t even realize they were still making phones to be honest.

Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores (gizmodo.com)

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

Ottomateeverything ,

Yes, because when you run systems like that, you use the AI, and you have the people as a fallback for when the AI fails.

It was primarily watched by people in India because the AI was failing the vast majority of the time.

So yeah, the state of the art AI is… Failing at its job 70% of the time. Instead of the hoped goal of 5%.

Ottomateeverything ,

That’s because it is. People who don’t understand just make shit up. That’s why the number of P’s doesn’t even line up.

Ottomateeverything ,

so do some folks use opp as “opponent”? Sure, that’s believable. But I feel fairly confident…

Bro, it doesn’t even have the right number of P’s for your reasoning to make any sense.

It comes from “opponent,” that’s why there are two P’s. It comes from video games/chess/card games/etc where you refer to the person or persons you’re playing against as the “opponent”. It’s been happening for many years but has made it’s way into gen z slang.

Ottomateeverything , (edited )

Yes. But only if you don’t pronounce GIF like a heathen.

Ottomateeverything ,

I could see an argument about medical devices, HVAC, and vehicles… But I don’t think I’d agree with them. Except maybe medical.

Consoles and toothbrushes though? What the fuck?

Ottomateeverything ,

I mean, I don’t want the thing supplying the air I’m breathing to accidentally not burn all the gas and lead to carbon monoxide poisoning etc… Things like the ductwork and shit, for sure, but not like, a burner.

Ottomateeverything ,

Yeah that’s totally valid. Agreed.

But I also wouldn’t really trust third party parts for the appliance itself. I think once you do, that immediately becomes a possible problem. If it was in my house, I’d only buy from the manufacturer for something like that.

But on the other hand, Idk that it’s necessarily wrong to legislate forcing these companies to allow it. I generally believe consumers should have the option on their own, but some things are too dangerous. I’d pretty much be against medical devices but HVAC is a little more uncertain to me.

Ottomateeverything ,

Firstly, I said this one was iffy to me.

Second, the subtopic was HVAC and thermostats are like, the electronics that control the HVAC which I wouldn’t even really necessarily bucket into HVAC. It’s like HVAC adjacent.

Third, this whole topic is about right to repair, not right to replace. So the on topic argument is “you want to be able to repair the same thermostat with off brand parts”, to which I say, yes? Probably? I don’t see how that’s a problem.

And fourth, who the fuck would buy an Amazon thermostat, lmao.

Ottomateeverything ,

What… The… Fuck?

If your thermostat could cause a fire or gas leak, your HVAC system is flawed. This is entirely a fabricated concern. If anything, I’d chalk it up as reasons why maybe right to repair the HVAC isn’t a great idea. A properly setup HVAC wont let anything tell it to do that.

Ottomateeverything ,

That’s more “device” pairing than “parts” pairing. The thermostat to HVAC communication is a standard. Sure, if someone started forcing that, that’d be bad. But that’s more akin to Apple’s “iOS only works with MacBooks” type shit with Airdrop and such than it is to their “you can’t replace the camera in your phone unless it’s from us”. They’re both problems, but the one you’re describing is both not happening and a different issue. I’m not saying it won’t happen but it’s a different topic.

Ottomateeverything ,

It’s basically an analog version of an HDMI cable. Except no audio, only video.

It’s like the yellow RCA cable, but for computer monitors instead of TVs

Ottomateeverything ,

Yeah, I just meant for explaining the function of what the thing does.

Ottomateeverything ,

I know it’s not everyones cup of tea but…

I ended up buying a Pixel Fold for the Fold aspect. There’s an added benefit that it’s really short when folded so I can reach the entire screen one handed. It’s heavier and thicker than a slate phone, but I actually enjoy the folded experience way better than other phones.

Ottomateeverything , (edited )

They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn’t feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor.

Not… Really… Sure it makes some difference, but the much more constraining factor is the money. Cameras arent that big, but they’re one of the priciest pieces of hardware in the device.

The problem is more that they keep trying to sell small phones at cheaper price points. So they end up with much worse screens, socs, and cameras so they perform like shit. People don’t want a small phone because they don’t care about their phone. People want small phones because the standard size is fucking huge. They need to make a high-ish tier small phone instead of low tier small phone that performs like the 50 Walmart shit.

Ottomateeverything ,

There’s isn’t enough physical space for three sensors on a smaller phone especially if it’s the size of the iPhone mini

I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that “more cameras” is the complaints being made here. Sure, telephotos make sense as things that take up more space. But most people are using them for like 1 in 50 shots or something. I have an extremely hard time believing that someone would genuinely notice the difference unless they’re an extreme case or they’ve been told the other ones are better. Within reasonable effective focal lengths, these are pretty negligible in the sizes we’re talking about.

If Apple couldn’t make a smaller phone sell particularly well, I doubt anyone else could.

I hard disagree with this. Apple is literally the worst company to try to make this shit work. Apple’s core selling point is the status symbol of it all. People trying to show off having the flashiest phone are not going to buy a product being touted as a half baked smaller and cheaper version of something else. Their entire marketing was about it being mini. Apple customers are not the core audience for something like this, and Apple marketed it as exactly what people disliked about small phones.

around or less than 5% of total iPhone 12 and 13 sales

I find it more surprising that this was below expectations than I do that only 5% of people bought a smaller phone. I doubt much more than 1 in 20 people really is after a smaller phone. I’m sure they exist, but based on the people I know and the number of people I’ve heard interested in smaller phones, I’d estimate it more like 1 in 20 to 1 in 40. It’s not for most people by any means. But 1 in 20 is still a decent number of people.

Ottomateeverything ,

Yeah, it’s in the name is “security”. As if a third party camera or back cover is going to break into the OS, harvest super important user data, and then somehow find some way to transmit it back to headquarters.

You know, or they just want to make money off of selling parts at 200% profit instead of Apples 500%.

The idea that this is somehow a security risk is a giant steamy pile of bullshit to keep people buying their garbage.

Ottomateeverything ,

This seems like a detour around right to repair.

That’s because it is. That’s all Apple does. Every time they get brought to court around shit, like the app store stuff in EU that just happened, they make it intentionally as difficult as could possibly be while still technically following the request. It’s malicious compliance at every step of the way even when they get caught. They’re so anti-consumer it’s not even funny.

Disable OnePlus N30. Full charge notification

So I have a couple month old OnePlus N30 phone, and one thing that drives me crazy with it is when I plug it in at night to charge, eventually it fully charges. You would think this is good, but then it decides to vibrate every 30 seconds or minute or so to tell me it’s fully charged. Over and over again till it wakes me up...

Ottomateeverything ,

Can’t answer the rest of your question because I don’t use a one plus but:

aren’t you supposed to charge the phone overnight?

No, you aren’t “supposed” to charge your phone overnight. Leaving your phone on the charger at 100% is actually pretty bad for long term battery health. Hence why the notification exists in the first place. Modern phones also full charge in like an hour, so this leaves your phone in that state for many hours.

The longer story is it’s actually best to stop charging your phone at 80 percent unless you really need the extra juice, because any time your phone spends above that is potentially damaging, but that tends to be hard to deal with for most people.

Most of the phones I’ve seen with this feature have a “battery warning” or “charge notification” or “protect battery” type setting somewhere you can turn off. But again, I’ve never used a one plus so Idk if they do or where it is.

Ottomateeverything ,

It hasn’t been in a long time. Charge controllers still charge to damaging voltages anyway. 100% isn’t 100% but you can very easily check the voltage on phones and many still are into damaging territory beyond 80%.

Ottomateeverything ,

Yes, the battery doesn’t charge to “dangerous - could explode” levels. But they very much do still charge to levels that are damaging to long term health/capacity of the battery.

Yes, they tune the batteries so that 100% isn’t the absolute cap. But even with that accounted for, many batteries will be above values that would be considered good for the long term health of a lithium cell. 80 percent on most phones is still very much at levels that are considered damaging to lithium batteries.

To put it another way, the higher you charge a lithium battery, the more stress you put on it. The more stress you put on it, the fewer charge cycles those components will hold. It’s not like there’s a “magic number” at 80 percent, it’s just that the higher you go the worse it is. Yes, some manufacturers have tweaked charge curves to be more reasonable. But they’ve also increased limits. Many batteries now charge substantially higher than most people would consider sustainable.

And after such changes, 80% lands pretty close to the general recommendations for improved battery longevity. Every percent will help, but it’s not a hard and fast rule.

Calibrations have gotten a little better in some ways, but all you have to do is look at basic recommendations from battery experts and look at your phones battery voltage to see that almost every manufacturer is pushing well past the typical recommendations at 90 or even 85 percent.

Ottomateeverything ,

That’s why Pixels and some others have a “smart charge” feature that will wait to charge your phone until just before your alarm time so that it will finish right before you take it off the charger.

why am I going backwards to needing to babysit my phone when it’s charging, and why would anyone want to charge their phone when they want to be using it vs when they’re asleep?

I honestly don’t understand why people have such trouble with this. I can throw my phone on a charger when I go to shower and it’s at 80 percent when I get out, and that’s enough for my day. I could leave it while I get dressed and eat or something and it’d be at 100 if I needed. I don’t need my phone 24 hours a day. And there are many points in my day where I’m not using my phone for an hour that I could spare to charge it. I don’t need to leave it burning away permanent battery capacity for hours and hours every night.

Ottomateeverything ,

The notification itself is super helpful if you care about battery health. There are apps that try to do it if your phone doesn’t have one, but they aren’t nearly as well integrated into the system and are therefore more clunky.

The insane/annoying part is just that the setting is not opt-in. Or whether there’s a setting to turn it off.

Ottomateeverything ,

Pixels have this too. I believe one plus does too but I don’t remember. Idk about anyone else.

Ottomateeverything ,

I can’t agree with this more. People like to sell Linux as a magic bullet, but it does not and will not everything everyone needs without maintenance and people really like to hand wave or downplay that need.

Sure, you could find a solution for what they’re using now. What happens when they need something else and they’re so tech illiterate that they don’t even know what you did to their machine? They wouldn’t even know how to install new software, and if they did, they wouldn’t know they need to click the Linux version, etc. It’s not always about feasibility and available options, it’s often about the fact that people just won’t fucking know what to do. Even if you assume there are enough options available, they won’t know how to do so.

And every step Microsoft takes to shoot themselves in the foot, and every step Linux takes to make this easier, everyone comes screaming about how much this could change things.

But until Linux has a HUGE market share - like in the 30-70 percent range - developers are not going to take it seriously and alleviate this process. Even with how well MacOS does, this is not even a solved problem entirely there - there are still hang ups and still software that doesn’t get released for mac. Linux would have to pass where Apple is today for this to become remotely accessible to an every day person.

And even THEN there’s the question of different Linux distros.

Ottomateeverything , (edited )

Yeah, and it’s likely way less costly to the company to just buy a new win 11 computer than it is to pay an employee to train on new software. Not to mention the cost of paying someone to find someone to do a Linux conversion, paying the person doing the conversion, and the loss of productivity as the person learns. Not to mention the cost of changing IT infrastructure, hiring new IT people to manage those machines, etc.

There’s a reason companies don’t just switch at the drop of the hat. There’s too much commitment and institutional knowledge already and moving is not a simple change.

Ottomateeverything ,

While I don’t really disagree, look at the market share of Chromebooks. If “most people” only needed internet access, “most people” would be on Chromebooks by now. It’s not like they’re unknown anymore.

Ottomateeverything ,

Like he said as the second sentence of his comment…

You’ve never worked in enterprise then.

These solutions are skipping the majority of the core problems he mentioned. And even the problem you’re trying to solve here isn’t even fully solved by this solution. You’re taking a narrow sliver of one point in his argument and arguing about that and just tossing out the rest. Even if we accepted your proposal, Linux still isn’t enough of an answer here.

Ottomateeverything ,

Yes, but Chromebooks are far from “newcomers” these days. They’ve been out a while. Many people who grew up using them in schools are now making their own purchasing decisions, etc.

Ottomateeverything ,

I don’t know if this makes me “a redditor” somehow or what, but…

As a dev, I am deeply troubled by the gaming industry so calmly walking into kernel anti cheats. It’s insane and being tossed around like it’s nothing.

Helldivers especially, since they picked one of the sketchiest ones and it’s a game that entirely doesn’t need it.

I have no idea if Reddit has suddenly picked up on this, but I’ve been pissed since at least Valorants release, but have seen more YT videos talking about it recently.

Ottomateeverything ,

It does

steamdb.info/tech/AntiCheat/nProtect_GameGuard/

resetera.com/…/helldivers-2-incorporates-nprotect…

Ottomateeverything ,

I really do not understand how server anti cheat is not way easier.

In a clean slate, it is. It’s also way more effective (except for things like wall hacks, aim bots, recoil suppressors, etc, but most of those things are only really important and popular in competitive FPS). It’s also much simpler to understand and to leave no “holes” behind. It also lives in the developers domain so it can’t be “compromised” or circumvented.

The thing is that client side “anti cheat” can be commoditized. Every game with server authority/anti cheat needs specific server software to run their game logic. Client anti cheat is basically “look at everything else running on the system and see if any of it seems suspicious”. As such, there’s not really anything “game specific” to these - they basically are just a watch dog looking for bad actors - so as such, one company can come along, make one, and sell it to other devs.

This being “off the shelf” and not something the dev team has to think about besides a price tag means that management is just going to buy a third party solution and check off the “anti cheat” box on their task list.

I feel like devs are caught up on realtime anti cheat and not willing to do anything asynchronous.

First, this is a management problem and not the devs. Any dev worth their salt knows this isn’t really a good solution.

But I’d say the more relevant and prominent thing here is that game companies just don’t want to have to run servers anymore. It’s a cost, requires dev time, and requires maintenance, and they don’t want to do that. If these games had servers running the game world like games used to, they’d inherently have their own “anti cheat” built in for free that wouldn’t necessarily catch everything but would do a better job than some of these. And it could be enhanced to cover more bases.

But studios don’t want to do this anymore. It’s easier to make the game p2p and slap an off the shelf anti cheat and call it a day.

Some games still require matchmaking servers etc, but the overhead there is way lower.

Or they really like paying licensing fees for client-side anticheat.

Not that I agree with the decision, but it is definitely cheaper and faster than the alternative. But picking something like nprotect totally fucking baffles me. There are better options.

I just don’t understand how any competent software engineer or systems admin or architect trusts the client so fervently.

In some ways, same. Every project I’ve been on that has gotten anywhere near client side trust I’ve fought adamantly about avoiding it. I’ve won most arguments on it, but there are some places where they just utterly refuse.

But then there are things like New World… I don’t know how the fuck that shit released like it did. The number of things trusted to the client were absolutely baffling. I expected Amazon’s first foray into gaming to be a fucking joke, but I was totally appalled at how bad it turned out. They even touted hiring ex blizzard talent to get my hopes up first.

Ottomateeverything ,

He built his business by scamming warehouses… They’re both dirt. Bezos just isn’t as insecure and doesn’t try to gloat where everyone can see his insanity.

EU Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers (ec.europa.eu)

The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users’) through its App Store. In particular, the Commission found that Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from...

Ottomateeverything ,

Wait, you still can’t use HomePod/Siri to control Spotify? How the fuck does this company continue to exist? Why do people put up with their fucking garbage?

Ottomateeverything ,

Yeah, that’s really really fucking stupid.

Ottomateeverything ,

It’s very much not on Spotify. It supports services apple decided aren’t competing with Apple Music. Look at all the things missing, as your article points out.

It’s crazy how much bullshit Apple can pull, and even semi educated people will come to their defense blaming other people for apples failings.

Ottomateeverything ,

And coincidentally YouTube, Spotify, and Amazon Music, all of Apple Musics competition, just all happened to not implement this? All of Apples competition just decided to not add a pretty critical function to the people of that ecosystem? When they all do it in Google’s?

Yeah, I don’t buy that. At all. Sure the API might be there, but you know who gatekeeps those APIs? Apple. This smells a lot more like Apples fued with Google over turn by turn directions bullshit. Especially when we can see how blatantly hostile to Spotify Apple is willing to be.

It seems a lot more likely that Apple is holding that API over their heads and refusing to allow access to it, than it does that all their Apple Music competition just happens to have all conveniently forgotten to implement a pretty core feature in Apple’s ecosystem, while remembering to do it in Googles.

Ottomateeverything ,

I have no experience with them, but FYI a bunch of people were recommending sceptre for dumb TVs in other threads.

Ottomateeverything ,

I had a programmer lead who rejected any and all code with comments “because I like clean code. If it’s not in the git log, it’s not a comment.”

Pretty sure I would quit on the spot. Clearly doesn’t understand “clean” code, nor how people are going to interface with code, or git for that matter. Even if you write a book for each commit, that would be so hard to track down relevant info.

Roku TV bricked until agreeing to new terms of service

See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn’t use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don’t agree to their terms, then I don’t get access to their new products. That...

Ottomateeverything ,

Yeah, I totally agree with you, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s bullshit to switch terms. And also bullshit to write terms that just say “if we fuck you over, you can’t do anything about it”.

I just wanted to point out that the legality of it probably wouldn’t hold any actual water so don’t be totally paranoid about it and take it with a grain of salt. For anyone who’s a little more torn.

But yeah, Idk that I’d keep the device at that point either.

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