ThePowerOfGeek

A lot of the comments here seem to be missing some key points from this article:

• The writer made her own likeness available to everyone on purpose. She did this knowing what would happen, but it was part of the exercise of seeing how weird it would get. So the points that she was stupid for doing, or that she was outraged by this, this are missing the point. Was she stupid? Maybe, but she made a conscious sacrifice on her likeliness. Was she outraged? Clearly not.
• It’s short-sighted to say “yeah this will happen, so don’t put your is image out there”. There are lots of people (especially women and girls) who have gone out of the way to avoid having their image/likeness out there for these it similar reasons. But they have still ended up the victim of humiliation and trauma from photoshopped images or deep fakes made against them.
• This second point was a big part of what the author was trying to point out. It’s both a warning to others about being careful of protecting your identity, and an alarm sounding that there are some really weird and creepy fetishes out there that people can get their likelinesses pulled into, even when you actively try to avoid that.
• It also highlights the lack of safeguards on this kind of issue. Consent, age, level of fame… none of that matters in this issue. And in most cases the companies behind these tools don’t do shit to address these concerns.

Citizens United strikes again.

I don’t trust some of the numbers in this article.

Microsoft Teams: 100% CPU usage on 32GB machines

I’m literally sitting here right now on a Teams call (I’ve already contributed what I needed to), looking at my CPU usage, which is staying in the 4.6% to 7.3% CPU range.

Is that still too high? Probably. Have I seen it hit 100% CPU usage? Yes, rarely (but that’s usually a sign of a deeper issue).

Maybe the author is going with worst case scenario. But in that case he should probably qualify the examples more.

No u

Beep boop

In most cases it would be okay. But I have a few files that need on the fly transcoding. I guess another option would be for me to go back and convert them.

I keep hoping they will develop a model that can dynamically transcode a couple of streams concurrently, so I can move my media server over to a Pi. But I am pretty sure that will never happen. It’s just not in the intended use for a Pi. Oh well, I still have my old mini PC for that. And I know there are other cool things I could do with this.

A lot of self-promotion quotes in there from companies involved in the H1B visa industry. But one broad trend among them: this will empower developing and non-Western developed nations at the expense of the American tech industry - especially the tech industry outside the big 5 or 6 giants.

It’s the same reason IBM still exists. Massive multinational / government contracts keep them alive and healthy.

Oracle will be handling TikTok’s algorithm? Okay, so TikTok’s back-end workflow/decisioning engine will rapidly bloat up and will need to be completely replaced every two years. Got it.

There’s are still some consumer TVs out there that allow you to use the green without an Internet connection. Although they are kinda rare these days.

Sony Bravia. Because I just did this last year. My old TV was also a Bravia, and it lasted about 15 years. One big selling feature for me was that you can set it up as either a smart TV, or a ‘basic’ TV that doesn’t require an Internet connection and doesn’t pester you for one.

Amen. I’ve tried the vibe coding thing but it’s frustrating because a) too often the AI output has some profound problems and it gets annoying ‘babysitting’ it; and b) I usually prefer the challenge of figuring out syntax and implementation issues myself.

If something is taking too long I’ll ask the LLM. But I feel like if I do this too much my skill set will atrophy and I’ll lose my sharpness. So it’s a balancing act.

But this brings up another wider question: where is the line between “occasionally getting AI help” and “vibe coding”? Surely it’s subjective.

So glad I abandoned Roku. Just wish I had done it sooner.

It’s almost like he’s full of shit and he’s nothing but a snake oil salesman, eh.

They’ve been talking about replacing software developers with automated/AI systems for a quarter of a century. Probably longer then that, in fact.

We’re definitely closer to that than ever. But there’s still a huge step between some rando vibe coding a one page web app and developers augmenting their work with AI, and someone building a complex, business rule heavy, heavy load, scalable real world system. The chronic under-appreciation of engineering and design experience continues unabated.

Anthropic, Open AI, etc? They will continue to hype their own products with outrageous claims. Because that’s what gets them more VC money. Grifters gonna grift.

Give it about a month and I’m sure there will be (…unfortunately).

For anyone who’s not aware, there are some pretty cool open source Minecraft options. Like Luanti (which is more like a playground for all sorts of FOSS Minecraft variants).

Yeah it’s crazy. They are trying to cater to older users, probably because they feel they can get more money from them.

It should at the very least get a new, better CEO. And also calm down with their focus on getting older users and encouraging user dating services. They have a solid user base with younger users, and should be focused on them and their protection.

But yeah, just shutting down might be the best option.

They’ve been going after private server farms for years, so this is nothing new really. For example, Blizzard forced Nostralrius (sp?) servers to shut down about 10 years ago.

I second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.