Your setup is closer to “statistic” than “anecdote,” so curious how many drive failures you’ve had?

What is the primary OS you run to manage all of the components?

I have now!

I think for me, the challenge is finding something that breaks down trends and ideas without resorting to discourse that’s been overworked. Vocabulary that already has been politicized by society won’t change any minds because exposure immunizes people against ideas, even good ones. The revolutionary idea becomes mundane given exposure plus time.

That’s what I think is unique about Adam Curtis, is he studiously avoids any framing that feels like a rote “capitalism” critique, but instead speaks to something more fundamental to human nature.

Yep, same. I really enjoyed All Watched Over, which I feel presciently explains some of the techno-fascism trends that have taken over the last six months, and of course Hypernormalization which is the corollary politically.

I feel like we’re in an era of anterograde amnesia where national memories reset every two weeks, and his work makes me feel slightly less insane, both remembering and filling in the gaps of how we got here.

I’m not aware of any similar. But since it’s so rare I come across people who actually know who this is, I’ll ask: what’s the best one, in your opinion?

I get that it’s usually just a dunk on AI, but it is also still a valid demonstration that AI has pretty severe and unpredictable gaps in functionality, in addition to failing to properly indicate confidence (or lack thereof).

People who understand that it’s a glorified autocomplete will know how to disregard or prompt around some of these gaps, but this remains a litmus test because it succinctly shows you cannot trust an LLM response even in many “easy” cases.

Seven figures? Try nine. Musk spent an absolutely staggering amount getting Trump elected.

Thanks, I didn’t know that!

Well, Nvidia seemingly forgot to price gouge on RAM for the 3060 and they had a 12 GB standard version for a while. That should have been the low range standard, with 24 for mid and 32 for high, but they’ve adjusted.

Possible I suppose, but if that worked, not sure why they couldn’t just provide a diff patch that worked on the user’s existing binary…

What is the DMCA argument here? Does anyone know what was alleged by Sony?

It would need to be either using copyrighted code or circumventing copy protection. Neither seems likely for a frame rate mod.

What gets measured gets improved. The inverse is also true - what doesn’t get (or can’t be) measured deteriorates.

Google had a uniquely employee-friendly culture and probably the highest morale amongst the FAANG companies. But Sundar apparently couldn’t assign a value to that like he could quarterly balance sheet improvements, and at some point it appears to have disappeared from his decision tree entirely.

So it’s no surprise they discarded their entire company culture and are so concerned with the same Wall Street-pleasing nonsense efficiency metrics as a typical company. Google is no longer special in any way.

Wow, where did all those $1 million donations go that they couldn’t afford to give Carrie Underwood (checks notes) a stage.

I had a few dates with an asian woman in the US who called herself only half-sarcastically a “Twinkie,” which the Internet told me was yellow on the outside and white on the inside. I laughed to be polite not knowing what she meant, but when I learned it made me feel racist by proxy.

This is the typical Jack Welch stack-ranking nonsense. The theory is that there will always be a bell curve or similar distribution that requires a certain percent (Welch said 10%, but it’s all over the map) be cut while new hires are constantly brought on.

It kills morale and forces employees into short-term impact patterns to avoid the constant churn of cuts. It also means that performative work rather than actual substantive work is encouraged, since the appearance of productivity in whatever metric is stack-ranked is all that matters.

Finally, it encourages people to do the minimum, because the alternative is to compete for bonuses that are only going to the people who meet the highest appearance of productivity metrics, which doesn’t correlate strongly with actual productivity, just as actual productivity (in terms of “producing” output) is also not strongly correlated with value (such as by knowing enough to efficiently complete tasks such that you are not appearing to “produce,” due to being extremely efficient).

It’s somehow always disappointing, but comforting.

I will say, McDonalds in Japan was pretty impressive. The food was still basically McDonalds’ flavors, but was made like they actually cared. All of our food looked like it did in the pictures, flawless bun and fries appearance. It was kind of jarring, since I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen a US McDonalds burger that wasn’t a loose-wrapper intentionally-squished disc of sadness, with ketchup splattered and leaking from the side of the bun.

HDCP isn’t DRM’s ultimate form of course. HDCP “3.0” or its successor will not be so easily cracked, and Widevine is not as cracked as past protection schemes have been.

All of our non-Linux platforms will tighten DRM over time. Apple is already locked down. Android is moving to require boot-lock strong encryption and authentication to access sensitive apps, which is very difficult to spoof. Media companies will require that for future versions. Windows is on the TPM train. HDCP is just part of that “trust” chain, and it absolutely will be strengthened to match the base protection.

Edit: Didn’t realize HDCP is already at 2.2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection . Some interesting developments - namely a reminder that movie studios will also use lawsuits under the DMCA to try to suppress any technology that defeats DRM.

Piracy is resilient but there is no natural law that says piracy will always be available.

There will be a TPM 3.0. All those mechanisms in XBOX Series and PS5 that are actually effective for extended periods at preventing mass piracy, like one-directional fuses and minimum software updates for new releases with per-device keys, are not going to disappear. Tech and media companies are now working together to bypass the user in trust chains, so they only have to trust each other.

In a streaming-only world, I predict there will be a time soon where pirated content is not a bit-perfect copy because the digital environment is fully locked down. Maybe an analog reencode of display output will be a workaround. But like TPM, HDCP will advance, and maybe that avenue will be cut off too.

Once we lose physical media, we may be cooked.

Some weren’t connected? For most PCs that had it, it was a real thing, though counterintuitive and marketing-speak, because enabling “turbo” was just normal speed and disabling would run in a slower mode for compatibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button

Too funny - we were writing the same thing as the first comment. Libraries: two out of two Internet commenters agree!

Honestly, the library. They’ve been mostly forgotten in our digital present, but borrowing books for free is practically utopian in today’s enshittified, monetized world. You often can do it digitally if you like your devices.

Even if you never go to your library again after joining, a library card will usually get you free access to a streaming service like Kanopy or Hoopla that often has a not at all terrible selection.