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TheGrandNagus

@TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world

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TheGrandNagus ,

Nobody said Apple would do that. I don't know where you got that from.

They said that if Apple were to use their clout to pressure others into using an Apple-controlled ecosystem, people would be angry about it.

Yet, because it's Google not Apple, people are celebrating Google's RCS as a good thing and them being the good guys.

TheGrandNagus ,

They don't consider the iPhone a smartphone... because they refer to it by its name?

I've got some news for you, Samsung, OnePlus, etc all call their devices by their brand names in announcements/advertising too.

TheGrandNagus ,

Minor correction, although it changes nothing about your point:

tankie actually refers to people who defended the crushing of Hungarian and Czechoslovakian revolts by Soviet military personnel, who went as far as sending tanks in to quell civil unrest.

The term was originally coined in the UK and was an insult to British Communist Party followers who would slavishly follow the Kremlin line.

Of course, the term has now evolved to mean someone from the west who seems to dislike the west and praises Russia and China, despite them also being Capitalist countries now, and generally being more into imperialism.

TheGrandNagus ,

AFAIK that name was created before tianmen.

Correct. It actually originates from westerners who defended the Soviet Union sending tanks into Hungary and Czechoslovakia when citizens were protesting.

Wouldn't that make them just autocracy fans, not tankies?

They're kinda the same thing. A tankie is a fan of autocracy, but only when Russia or China does it. It's not a worldview that makes sense.

TheGrandNagus ,

Less of a thrill doing that than sexually harassing your employees I guess

TheGrandNagus ,

And so you should. Our products are of the highest quality.

TheGrandNagus ,

In fairness, at least Apple isn't bone-headed enough to take screenshots of your entire system every few seconds then store them unencrypted for any app that wants to access it to trivially do so.

Maybe I missed it, but they don't seem to have constant recording at all?

TheGrandNagus ,

They're definitely legal, they're just not sold. I've seen them, but they're generally sold by importer companies that sell JDM vehicles. A business in my area has a fleet of kei pickups

Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices (www.theverge.com)

The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU....

TheGrandNagus ,

No but also yes.

The spec itself is open, but implementations that are in the wild aren't. Google's implementation is proprietary, for example.

On Android, Google has went out of their way to make other RCS implementations virtually impossible to implement. Samsung, for example, had to enter an agreement with Google to use their implementation, otherwise they'd have no RCS.

As of now, the easiest way to implement RCS outside of using Google's proprietary implementation is to create your own OS and RCS implementation for it.

TheGrandNagus ,

The EU is fine with iMessage shenanigans, because they're not a significant enough part of the market to matter. Nobody uses SMS either.

It's WhatsApp all the way here.

TheGrandNagus ,

And Samsung's only got approved because it's Google's under the skin. A bit like how every browser on iOS is actually Safari.

RCS is purported to be open, but in practice it really isn't.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

I've heard that in the US fridges are generally different, with stuff like active fans and nonsense like that. Is that true?

Because every fridge I've seen in Europe is mechanically extremely basic and I've literally never seen or even heard of one breaking. In my experience fridges are one of the only things that have remained phenomenally simple in design and extremely unlikely to break.

If someone told me their fridge broke, I'd genuinely assume they were lying. That's how reliable they are.

A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back (www.windowscentral.com)

It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a...

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

And the annoying thing is, this tech can be exceptionally useful when it's actually been implemented thoughtfully.

Effortlessly cleaning up audio recordings using AI tooling is incredible, for example. There are audio recordings that I've been able to make sound great that previously would've required me to make some calls and ask for a bunch of re-recordings and added days of delays to a project.

AI in image recognition to vastly speed up medical imaging diagnosis, or analysing lab work? Amazing. Asking unpaid medical students to laboriously pore over thousands of images sounds like a nightmare.

Better offline translation? Sign me the fuck up.

Image description for the visually impaired, like my sister? Genuinely life changing. A lot of content online isn't properly tagged, or has zero attention placed on accessibility.

The list goes on. Unfortunately, with big tech being as they are, their first thoughts turn to "which implementations of AI will aid us the most in scraping userdata and showing ads?"

TheGrandNagus ,

How is that reasonable? Almost anything could be potentially used as a weapon, or to aid in crime.

TheGrandNagus ,

I'm pissed off I have to use Windows for work.

My job is almost entirely SSH-ing onto 40 different Linux servers, and doing some networking/bash script stuff, and sending emails.

It makes zero sense for my workplace to force me to use Windows, but they do. And my god, the laptop is slow. I keep thinking damn I have a laptop 10yrs older than this running Fedora just fine, and Fedora isn't even pegged as a lightweight distro.

TheGrandNagus ,

I can definitely see the utility in the feature, it's just that it, conceptually, is such a security risk that it's simply not worth it, even ignoring the data harvesting/storage penalty.

You enter a discussion and you need to refer to an article you know you've read but can't find? Now you can find it. You want a backpack and remember seeing one you liked but can't remember where you saw it? Ask it to show backpacks you looked at - great now you've tracked it down in seconds rather than spending half an hour.

But yeah, the security and privacy implications of this are so bad that it's really not worth the tradeoff.

TheGrandNagus ,

Or show calendar entries/weather for the day.

Anything would be better than landfill.

TheGrandNagus ,

Yeah the problem isn't so much that apple did that (a slower but functional device is infinitely better than a device that doesn't function), but that they didn't communicate it to users, and even after a battery replacement, the phone would often stick to being throttled (not sure if this was just for third party repairs or all repairs, but either isn't acceptable).

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

If by "incorrectly done" third party repairs, you mean ones that don't subscribe to apple's repair programme that insists on you giving up user's personal information, only using Apple parts both in the device and for the disassembly, and paying Apple fees, then sure.

You even have to disclose financial and tax information of your entire business to Apple. Plus they put restrictions on repairs - i.e no repairing individual components on PCBs, you have to replace the whole board.

But that's not how third party repairs should be done and you'd be massive cunt for championing that kind of bullshit business practice.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Ok cool, but what's the relevance?

Some batteries might be bad, so Apple gets to needlessly cripple your repaired phone's performance, unless you go through Apple?

How could you possibly argue that's not cunty behaviour?

If someone gets a repair with a non-OEM battery, and it turns out to be not good, then either let it shut down or throttle the performance as normal. If it turns out to be fine... don't. The device is capable of doing battery checks.

I really don't understand how you can defend Apple deliberately sabotaging performance over a part they know to be working fine.

TheGrandNagus ,

Sorry I hurt your feelings lol. I was only criticising a multi-trillion dollar company.

TheGrandNagus ,

Respect to Sony for that. As one of the biggest sellers of Bluetooth audio equipment, they're one of the ones that would gain most from nobody being able to use 3.5mm

TheGrandNagus ,

And stereo front speakers, IIRC

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Good guy CCP, breaking us free of government control, must be so good to live under them 🥰 more CCP control pls 😍🥰🥰

TheGrandNagus ,

Because they're notoriously fickle and bug/breakage-prone.

TheGrandNagus ,

I'm referring to Nvidia's dogshit Linux drivers.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

You should probably rephrase that to say Nvidia crashes and works poorly with Wayland.

Saying Wayland works badly with Nvidia is a bit like saying Linux doesn't support Photoshop, rather than the other way around.

TheGrandNagus ,

Not really, the wording completely changes who is at fault.

When you say Wayland doesn't work for Nvidia, it's blaming Wayland, but Linux/Wayland isn't at fault here, Nvidia is for providing drivers that aren't fit for purpose.

If Nvidia drivers broke on Windows, nobody would say "Windows is broken for Nvidia", they'd say the opposite, but with Linux we act like the problem is Wayland, for some reason.

TheGrandNagus ,

So fucking annoying that this shit gets rejected time and time again and yet they're allowed to just keep on asking and asking.

TheGrandNagus ,

Where I work, doing it won't end up in being fired, but it would certainly prevent promotions and payrises.

TheGrandNagus ,

To be fair, Data was designed to be like a human, and was made in the image of his creator. He has a number of design decisions that are essentially down to his creator wanting to create something like a human. Including that which you describe.

Data was never intended to work like a PC, it's very normal that he can't just wirelessly interface with stuff.

TheGrandNagus ,

The fact that the US allows companies to flat out steal your device during a repair process is insane. This is theft. Actual straight up theft.

Surely this doesn't even need any new laws - I'm pretty sure theft is already illegal

TheGrandNagus ,

Damn windows seems really complicated.

TheGrandNagus ,

Funny thing is, I find myself forced to use the command prompt more in Windows than I do the terminal in Linux. And don't get me started on the absolute nightmare that the windows registry is.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Is it stupid? I doubt MS cares about the absolutely miniscule amount of people who will care enough to complain about this. Those people would probably just turn the feature off, or use a different OS, anyway. Catering to that audience isn't something MS cares about.

The average user won't do a thing. MS gets to outsource the computational work of all this spying to their users and then hoover up the data at the end. Microsoft stands to gain a lot from this in the markets where it will be allowed to fly.

TheGrandNagus ,

And for battery life, see if you can find any info on what others have got with your machine. I've got anything from a fair bit better, to the same, to an absolute catastrophe.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Cis is just a Latin prefix that means "on the same side of", and is the opposite of trans, which means "on the other side of".

I.e. your gender identity is the same as what you were assigned at birth, therefore cis.

Another prefix that would fit well, as it means "the same as/equal/alike" would be homo.

Perhaps we should indulge Elon's wishes and instead use the term homogender or homo, for short. I'm sure he'd love that.

TheGrandNagus ,

The UK* is waaaaaaaaaaaay more open about sex and nudity than the US

TheGrandNagus ,

When it comes to software, certainly.

But it's also important not to fanboy over people too much or assume they're right about literally everything. I doubt most people here would share Stallman's views on paedophilia, for example.

TheGrandNagus ,

Gnome when you first use it feels like a stupid system, then once it "clicks", you feel like the devs were goddamn geniuses for creating a workflow like it.

And yeah, the polish is nuts considering for a long time and assumption about FOSS was that all the apps are ugly and unpolished.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

I have ADHD. How is it worse? I find window managers interesting in theory but absolutely dreadful in actual use.

None are even close to feeling usable for anything other than showing off terminal windows

E: jfc, I obviously meant tiling window managers, since that's what you were talking about. I'm not advocating for desktops to have literally no ability to manage windows.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

He did. But also not really.

He's held the view that there's nothing wrong with adults having sex with children for decades (and even championed it using his workplace email address)

He then said he's changed his mind... two days after people were calling for his resignation and his job was on the line.

Now, maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I personally think that was more of a last-ditch attempt at saving his job than a genuine sudden epiphany that maybe having sex with children is wrong that just happened to happen at the time that it did.

TheGrandNagus ,

I obviously meant tiling window manager setups, like you described.

And no I didn't say using the terminal means you're a showoff, I have it open all throughout my workday.

I was saying that TWM setups are poor in terms of usability. The Gnome workflow is perfect for people with ADHD. I can't really think of anything better.

TheGrandNagus ,

Only two days after his job became on the line.

Call me a pessimist, but that timing seems suspect to me.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Probably because they knew it'd devolve into stupid comments like yours. Honestly what were you trying to achieve by just baselessly calling someone a Mozilla shill?

But for anybody curious, the "AI" that Mozilla will be implementing is entirely optional, trained on open source datasets that have been ethically sourced, works entirely offline, is run locally, and doesn't send your personal info to Mozilla.

It will be used for things like better offline translation, finding alternate sources for articles if you want to find them, spotting fake reviews, as well as accessibility features like a better screen reader and image descriptions for images without a manually added description tag.

Personally my issues with AI are pretty much entirely related to stealing training data, and using AI as an excuse to push more ads and scrape more userdata. That's not the case here, and this should not be treated like Google/MS's AI features.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Yeah. Foundries/manufacturing processes last decades. I feel like Reddit/Lemmy is very consumer electronics focused, so they think anything worse than TSMC's N3 process is literally unusable garbage (slight exaggeration but I'm sure you get my point)

Plus this isn't the most advanced process they can make. We know for a fact they at least have 90nm lithography machines, they just weren't made in-house like this one. And it's undeniable they're smuggling stuff in from other countries. Like do people really think Russia has no modern GPUs for things like simulations, crunching satellite images, etc? Pull the other one.

This, unfortunately, is certainly a big deal and will be very important to Russia. Hence why they sought to do it in the first place.

Are they a threat to countries like the US, UK, France, etc? Of course not. But Russia seemingly transitioning themselves to a war-based economy should be concerning for people regardless.

The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates (www.theguardian.com)

Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually....

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Assuming that's true, most of the oil tends to clump together. 2000L doesn't just perfectly disperse out across billions of litres of water, contaminating everything.

TheGrandNagus ,

From the video, he highlighted Fractal Design and Arctic to be really really excellent.

However, while being in the PC parts industry, they don't really overlap all that much with Asus.

Anecdotally I can say that BeQuiet for me has been superb. But again, they're not really an Asus competitor. The closest would probably be MSI or Gigabyte, both of whom have had their own issues as well, though perhaps not as bad.

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