RajT88

I've worked out the router blocking already. It also blocks app updates and downloads, which is a pain.

Down in Mexico, it made the news that about 30 years ago scientists looked into a village which grew corn 20 feet high. It was of interest to them, because it seemed to have figured out how to fertilize itself. It's a wild story.

It's totally plausible that cultivars and species are in some crazy rural pocket and not well known. I'm coming to appreciate the idea that despite everyone being connected to a global computer network with a camera device, not everything has found its way into the realm of scientific knowledge. What other plants and animals might be out there?

Is it permanently rooted? Or does it revert you if the TV decides to upgrade itself? Intentionally never upgraded my firmware, but it did it automatically once despite me not approving it.

It doesn't sound insane, actually. Keeping in mind, Windows XP did exactly that for a while until everyone realized, "hey, that's a security issue". I would swear MacOS too, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

There's been HTPC frontends that emulated that UI. I think no longer maintained.

These days, probably you could feed a video into Claude Code and have it spit out one which is pretty decent.

I was 26 when I bought one, and agree. I long for a modern STB with the Wii interface and lots of OSS to tinker with. The sounds, the music, the tactile feel of using the WiiMode to navigate was sublime.

The games were cool too.

There's probably a dozen posts at least for getting applications to find their dependencies because of one behavior or another. COM servers, .Net. Trying to get running apps to use an updated PATH or other environment variable.

Canada > America North

Never ending September?

I hate it. It's beyond me why people would intentionally smudge their laptop display.

I guess if you have a laptop that functions in tablet mode, it makes sense (I don't love tablet modes either).

Someone called out the surface - which is great with the surface pen. I'll agree this is a great use case. I would say this use case is rarer than the prior use cases where you use your meat sticks.

Trying to explain the difference between civil and criminal law never seems to go anywhere on this topic when you're dealing with "sea lions".

That happens occasionally. But it mostly doesn't happen. Mostly, the people who end up with criminal charges are the illegal immigrants. If you dig into the numbers it tells the story of a vanishingly small number of companies (like hundreds per year out of millions) getting scrutiny. The industries which get the scrutiny are the ones where people could end up dead or injured (construction, meat packing, etc.). (According to Gemini - grain of salt)

Renamed "America Intelligence"?

I believe this number is FTE's and not contractors. That's a whole different story, and I don't think those numbers are public. After a layoff at big tech, you see an influx of contractors. I would not be surprised if it was 50/50 at this point.

I am guessing it is aspirational. I have worked with execs that demand the impossible to get more than they would have otherwise out of teams.

In the rules of haggling, you never accept the first offer. You also need to walk away twice.

This may yet come to pass.

In fairness, they have not earned the benefit of the doubt based on past behavior.

I know what you're talking about. Microsoft is so large, that the smallest of gaps are enough for ecosystems to form around and provide people a living.

For example, people trawling the Microsoft Q&A forum for low hanging fruit to provide advice to and build out their little home computer repair business profile.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/tags/824/windows-h...

Some of these answers are really dubious. Some of these questions are really dubious.

Alternate theory:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130226221212/http://windows95t...

There's your mistake. You need to be watching Spanish teachers.

I'm sure some are like you describe.

But what I keep seeing is stuff like this:

An account which seems like it was a normal account for like 10 years. Maybe it leans a bit in the direction of the content it is currently posting. But, it was mostly dormant for a few years. Then, it started posting a high volume of partisan content. It otherwise seems to be a real person, just it one day started posting hardcore partisan materials all over the regional groups (usually multiple). It's fishy.

Another one: An account which superficially seems to be a real account, except that it's got a generic enough name you can't pin down which person with that name it might be. Nothing about their profile identifies them as anyone in particular. They may have a lot of friends, but they don't appear to be people who know them IRL - just randos. Their profile feed is a mix of normal stuff and partisan stuff. What they post to groups is 100% hardcore partisan stuff. Their profile is very light on photos of themself, and always kind of low quality. There's never a photo of a place you can pin down to a real location. These don't tend to be accounts that have been around more than a year or three. Again, it's fishy.

Like I mentioned, in both cases, you'll see the accounts posting at odd hours for where they supposedly live.

They could be real people, or sophisticated trolling operations. TBH, the reason I lean more towards the latter is because Facebook is so goddamned lax about any kind of enforcement. Do I think someone could set up a bunch of fake profiles and operate them for years, all from the same Chinese or Russian IP address with locations all in the US, and Facebook would never ban them despite the accounts getting flagged? Yes, that is extremely easy to believe. If it drives engagement (and troll accounts do!), it's likely to be allowed to continue.

I'd be the happiest man on the internet for a split second if someone who works for Meta tromps on in here with a burner account and tells me I'm being an idiot, that they're fighting hard against troll armies and bots, that it's just a super hard problem because the troll/bot networks are so sophisticated. Hasn't happened yet.

> Not only are they at mercy of FB, but there are a lot of insane people on FB.

A fair number - not all - I am convinced are foreign trolls, or bots. There's something which just feels a bit different from a normal partisan, and the kinds of folks who invade every regional (town, county, etc.) group and post nonstop partisan dreck. Their profiles are off in some way, and the hours they are posting are all over the map.

FB does have the "big tent" thing going on, where they wanted to become the tool for every possible organizing principle. So you do get some of the legitimately most wacky people on the internet as well.

Ed Zitron is a professional apocalypse predictor. Which is to say he's always wrong.

I tried to hire a general contractor or plumber recently. Called around, waited weeks for them to get back to me.

I ended up figuring out how to do the work myself.

What I gather is happening is that the K shaped economy is having wealthier people who benefit from the current tech boom buying and renovating houses at such a rate that skilled trades people are not bothering to chase smaller jobs.

That said, I am going to need some pretty good evidence a robot can be trusted to do the work. Working on houses in any form results in finding weird and unpredictable work from DIYers and prior generations doing things in radically different ways. My sink for example did not fit exactly the space the old cast iron sink sat in. What is the right decision: knock the spacers off the new stainless steel sink, or cut pieces of the countertop to make it fit? The next problem I had was the even once it fit, the faucet did not have clearance for the bolt which held it in place - requiring a trip to Home Depot to consult with their experts on how to handle it (turns out: a PVC pipe spacer cut to fit).

That is a lot of improvisation and dexterity for a simple sink replacement. It is going to be a while I think.

Using third party systems like Flock for warrantless police work has not been fully tested in courts yet. With the current SCOTUS, I fully expect them to find it constitutional somehow if it lands there.

Maybe missing from the debate: the Police officer was using Flock without a warrant as well.

Fisherman like them because fish bunch up beneath them. Despite the overall populations being higher once all the dams are gone.

There is an aspect of property value as well - dams maintain a certain river level and removal may impact how nice people's river houses are. (Source: Dam near me partly removed, turned into a kayak course.)

We can. One presumes it is less efficient than just removing the dam. It is more work versus less work - fish ladders and the like.

I go back periodically and watch the bulletproof glass demo on the cyber truck.

It beggars belief that was not scripted by a comedian. Comedic timing was perfect.

I think there is some confusion in the industry about what AI support bots are for.

They are primarily for making customers go away. The terrible support experience was already standard - they are just automating the "go away" experience.