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furrowsofar

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furrowsofar ,

US same. At least some places. 20 MPH in city and more bikeways. I think this is a trend.

furrowsofar ,

I am just picturing Zooms equivalent of Clippy.

furrowsofar ,

Not sure pricing now but historically HDMI was a lot cheaper so if you do not need it why pay for it. Typically it was on enterprise devices not consumer. Heck I am still using DVI on my workstation and KVM switch . Works fine and cheaper.

furrowsofar ,

Just install Libreoffice. No reason for MSO unless you work in an org that supplies it.

furrowsofar ,

I guess I am from the old days. For me MSO has had nothing in terms of needed improvements since about 1998. And thankfully I moved to Libreoffice before the ribbon bar and all the VBA issues with 2013. Libreoffice became usable about 2005. Yes it was Excel for me that was the last to go. Solver in particular. As far as VBA, I switched from that to python about 1998.

As far as dated. I think it depends on who you think defines the standard . For me that is not MS.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Yes. I use to have to do patent work in MSO. The other issue is presentations. If you just cannot go with a PDF or use your own laptop you kind of have to use MSO since it is often the only program available.

furrowsofar ,

Sure. No thanks.

furrowsofar ,

That is the thing. I would not do anything advanced in a spread sheet. Just not productive. I would use Python.

What’s the Matter with the smart home? (www.theverge.com)

The article discusses expectations for smart home announcements at the upcoming IFA tech show in Berlin. While companies may unveil new smart speakers, cameras and robot vacuums, the smart home remains fragmented as the Matter interoperability standard has yet to fully deliver on integrating devices. The author argues the...

furrowsofar , (edited )

Is there some reason just using z-wave and avoiding everything cloud is not just fine?

Seems like matter is more trying to resolve zigbee issues. Or am I missing something?

furrowsofar ,

As far as I know z-wave has been open for years. Is there something not so about that?

furrowsofar ,

I still have X10 stuff but need to move to something else at least for some things. I liked what I saw about z-wave in terms of being on another band from wifi and Bluetooth and also being more secure.

Then again I could wait some more too or just go z-wave and change later if needed.

furrowsofar ,

Thanks. What do you know about the security differences? Some say pairing security of Zigbee not that great. Thanks.

Other interesting thing is Debian seems to have z-wave libraries but not zigbee ones. At least my version of Debian which is old stable. Home Assistant seems to support both.

furrowsofar ,

Other question. If you were starting now what would you do? I need to start replacing old X10 stuff. Zigbee? Z-Wave? Both? Wait for Matter to sort out?

I am kind of attracted to using Home Assistant either on my media center or on a pi.

Thanks.

Jitsi, the open-source video conferencing platform, now requires a Google, Microsoft, or Facebook account for their online service (jitsi.org)

While Jitsi is open-source, most people use the platform they provide, meet.jit.si, for immediate conference calls. They have now introduced a “Know Your Customer” policy and require at least one of the attendees to log in with a Facebook, Github (Microsoft), or Google account....

furrowsofar , (edited )

Relax. Just use a different server. May not be exactly accurate either. How in the world do you have any idea who uses what server. I have never used this server.

One way is join the FSF and use their server. There are others or host your own too. The load and cost needs to be spread anyway.

furrowsofar ,

So funny. One immediately can see this article is biased based on using the pejorative term of “Piracy”. Let us please not use that term. It is either fair use or it is not and which it is has not been proven either way.

furrowsofar ,

I feel two ways about it. Absolutely it is recorded in a retrieval system and doing some sort of complicated lookup. So derivative.

On the other hand, the whole idea of copyright or other so called IP except maybe trademarks and trade dress in the most limited way is perverse and should not exist. Not that I have a better idea.

furrowsofar ,

I would disagree. It is just a big table lookup of sorts with some complicated interpolation/extrapolation algorithm. Training is recording the data into the net. Anything that comes out is derivative of the data that went in.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Step back for a moment. You put the data in, say images. The output you got depended on putting in the data. It is derivative of it. It is that simple. Does not matter how you obscure it with mumbo jumbo, you used the images.

On the other hand, is that fair use without some license? That is a different question and one about current law and what the law should be. Maybe it should depend on the nature of the training for example. For example reproducing images from other images that seems less fair. Classifying images by type, well that seems more fair. Lot of stuff to be worked out.

furrowsofar ,

This is not about microSD cards. This is about some very specific SSD USB hard drives.

Not sure why people would buy these from SanDisk anyway. I generally use Micron for SSDs… they have made various solid state memory products for 20 or 30 years. Not sure where SanDisk came from… I have more heard about flash drives from them and have a bunch of small SD cards myself.

furrowsofar ,

Yes I should have said Crucial. That is the brand used by Micron. Just got an MX500, 1TB drive for my Wife.

Who are the big names for SSDs anyway. I mean ones that actually make them and sell them, not just brand them? I just recognize Micron/Crucial from the old days. They do memory chips of other kinds so I felt they should know how to do this sort of memory chip… nothing more… do not know how people in the know rate them.

furrowsofar ,

The big issue is security. Setting up a VPS is quite technical but not impossible. Making sure it is secure is a totally other matter. Then keeping up with all of the updates, patches, and vulnerabilities is a full time job. So hosting stuff outside your own LAN is not something to take lightly.

The TV streaming apps broke their promises, and now they’re jacking up prices (arstechnica.com)

For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in....

furrowsofar ,

We have MythTV and a 4 channel HD Grabber card. Similar concept. Works great if you have good TV reception and a lot of channels. My wife still uses, but frankly me not so much now.

Lot of this is online now though say our local PBS TV station streaming platform. Other stuff I can get from Tubi, and Pluto. The free Roku channel has a lot of stuff too. We also still have Netflix, but frankly I do not use it much. Would cancel except my Wife likes it.

furrowsofar ,

Just check everything. These things can sound authoritative when they are not. They really are not much more then a parrot reciting meaningless stuff back. The shocking thing is they are quite good until they are just not of course.

As far as leaks. Do not put confidential info into into outside sites like chatgpt.

furrowsofar ,

This is the issue with big data. Big enough database you will find a closest match that seems pretty good. False positives are a huge concern in any big data approach… and couple that with lazy policing well you get this.

furrowsofar ,

They should at least try to recover the data. Maybe a data recovery program like spinrite would just do it. www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm .

Not running raid, not backing up, and not even trying the simplest recovery approaches is just sloppy and lazy. Do at least one of the three.

Like someone else said. Expect the biggest risk of failure when you buy it. Then like maybe 5 years out rising failure rates. Refreshing the disk pattern as it gets older can help too.

furrowsofar ,

I had a high failure rate in some Seagate drives in the early 00s. Switch vendors and never had the problem again.

We also do no know how they failed. Are they still image readable with ddrescue or spinrite for example or are they truly crashed. It is not clear if they even tried.

furrowsofar , (edited )
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furrowsofar ,

And they get to choose? Never worked for a business where that was true.

furrowsofar ,

If you want to have services on the internet just rent a VPS. Keep in mind though plan to keep anything on the internet very updated, secure, and maintained. Linode is one such provider. There are many others.

If on your LAN then frankly the lowest power thing you can live with as electric cost will be a major part of the cost. I actually have a fairly substantial Media Center computer but also host my services that in my LAN since it needs to be always on anyway. I would not call my my solution low power but it is on already any way. I just made the system capable of both uses.

furrowsofar ,

Basically confusing bandwidth and latency. As far as speed it all depends on what media.

furrowsofar ,

Fine. Good luck. I will just use a different site. I do agree though… the web needs a better way and that way should not be ads and tracking.

furrowsofar ,

Seems overblown. They said crypto, gaming, gambling, advertising, and marketing sites were the biggest targets. Not exactly critical stuff.

As far as botnets… Let orgs or agencies either patch the devices or disconnect them. Seems like there should be an agency that scans for problematic devices and takes action automatically.

furrowsofar ,

Not exactly true. Upstream could just disconnect the user for example at the ISP. One could also just disconnect whole countries if needed. We just do not take these these things seriously.

Similarly white hats could be scanning for vunerabilities and patching them when found before they could be exploited.

Similarly one could require all internet facing stuff to have an auto update feature.

Just saying many things could be done.

furrowsofar ,

Mutual insurance companies are not profit making companies.

furrowsofar , (edited )

Seems like crypto people do not like telegram because they rolled their own crypto. Often kind of a red flag. Counter is that I am not sure there is a known issue with it beyond the standard complaints.

Not sure why you would choose Telegram over Signal. The one thing I do not like about signal is your phone number is your ID though.

furrowsofar OP ,

Oh my friend wins lot of the time and does great work. They have also seen judges choose crap work too. So they know what to submit and not submit when certain judges are judging. It is a real thing.

furrowsofar OP , (edited )

Every electronic camera is going to do processing. Not sure one should reject based on standard processing and not being certain. I disagree with the judges that the process matters when your judging a result not the process. They basically rejected it for being too good.

furrowsofar OP ,

Yes fear. Fear that your skill and knowledge is no longer useful or you job no longer relevant.

The thing I fear is the flooding of the net with crap well more crap then now. Also people actually believing the crap. Trusted information sources and authenticated people are the only way I know around that.

Reddit is getting rid of its Gold awards system (www.theverge.com)

Reddit is removing its current coins and awards system on September 12th. Users will no longer be able to buy awards like Reddit Gold to give to other users’ posts. Reddit says the current awards system is too cluttered and confusing, so they plan to introduce a new simpler system in the coming months that will allow users to...

furrowsofar ,

Just no. We already have a money raising method opencollective.com. This is how you donate to Beehaw and others.

So go donate and stop free loading if you have not already done so. The challenge is of course that free loading is so much fun.

furrowsofar ,

Apple is a walled garden and because of it I will not touch their products. Stuff tends to be over priced too.

Do not use face ID on phones other than Apple and maybe Samsung as most are easily spoofed.

A phone is a throw away device so my opinion is buy the cheapest one that does what you need.

“Lying” in computer-generated texts: hallucinations and omissions (blog.oup.com)

There is huge excitement about ChatGPT and other large generative language models that produce fluent and human-like texts in English and other human languages. But these models have one big drawback, which is that their texts can be factually incorrect (hallucination) and also leave out key information (omission)....

furrowsofar ,

Oh please, let’s stop humanizing this stuff by calling this stuff hallucinations, and lying. These hidden boxes are just big table looks that use some sort of fancy interpolation/extrapolation engine. They are not human or intelligent yet if ever. It seems to be that the people pushing and talking about this stuff that are ones “hallucinating”.

What are your favorite browser extensions?

Ublock Origin is an obvious one, but I also can't stand not having Foxy Gestures anymore. It adds customizable mouse gestures, so you can set it up to have easy swipes to go back a page, reload a page, close a tab, etc, and it feels wonderful and smooth to use compared to just using the traditional buttons to do everything....

furrowsofar ,

Question: Does anyone know what security and privacy extensions are considered redundant in light of recent Firefox improvements in the past few years?

For example, I saw several people recommend Privacy Badger for example. I thought I heard somewhere that was considered not needed now. I do not know for sure so am frankly confused by this and some of the other extensions which I too use to use.

For me I have kind of stopped using most security/privacy extensions except uBlockOrigin and then just configuring Firefox rather tightly. Not sure if this is best approach or not. On one hand every extension increases the attack surface and the uniqueness of the browser so there is a point about less is better, on the other hand some may be useful too.

Thoughts? Thanks.

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