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Mereo

@ mereo @piefed.ca

Posts
8
Comments
109
Joined
11 mo. ago

Mereo is a sociologist who is also a nerd. He believes in open-source software.

I switched from: https://lemmy.ca/u/Mereo

  • Microsoft Needs Windows Lite, No telemetry, no spying, no ads, no AI, no .NET, to retain gamers and developers

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  • The author of the blog is living in dreamland. Microsoft will never release Windows Lite because, to management, Windows is a conduit for AI and subscriptions.

    Linux is the answer.

  • How should I be describing or categorizing Lemmy to other people?

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  • For those who had covid symtoms for some time, how did you get back in shape to run?

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  • Thank you for the reminder. You're right. My mind craves the same "runner's high" I used to get, but I need to accept the new reality. I need to take it easy and listen to my body.

    I will start by walking longer distances more and more.

  • Immich vs Ente ?

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  • What actual damage do you secure your servers against? Whats the attack vector?

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  • Public-facing services need at least a minimum level of security protection. All of my services are protected by the reverse proxy Caddy, and Crowdsec protects my system and services from malicious bots. My Flirt 2's firewall bans all malicious bots that Crowdsec discovers.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • I host SearXNG on my home server, and I configured it to provide better results than Google.

    I tried Kagi. It's nice, but the price is a bit high for a search engine.

  • Lesbian leader of the far-right AfD party criticizes homophobic stance of her party

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  • Wait wait wait... She expected a far right party would accept her reality? In which reality is she in?

  • TV Time is coming to an end, alternatives?

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  • Mark Zuckerberg tells staff that AI agents haven’t progressed as quickly as he’d hoped

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  • Management makes me laugh. They often make decisions on a whim without thorough planning. In my opinion, AI is here to stay. However, as companies like Ford have realized, you cannot replace humans with AI. AI is simply a tool for humans.

  • What's the worst part about getting older that young people don't know about?

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  • Realizing that I what I know is that I know nothing.

  • Meta's solution to the global memory shortage is to use DDR4 in a DDR5 server, with a custom chip making the impossible possible

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  • Yay... It will be expensive to build an AM4 system now...

  • Convinced my partner to install Linux on her laptop. Going with Zorin OS. Thoughts?

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  • You do you. You've been advised.

  • Convinced my partner to install Linux on her laptop. Going with Zorin OS. Thoughts?

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  • So, basically, Microsoft products. I know you can access the web versions of these products, but I don't recommend relying solely on them because the document formatting often doesn't appear correctly in the web versions. I usually have to open them on the desktop version.

    In that case, I recommend not going forward.

  • Convinced my partner to install Linux on her laptop. Going with Zorin OS. Thoughts?

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  • One concern I have is she uses her personal laptop for work.

    I will never agree to use my personal laptop for work. When I finish work, I hide my work laptop under the sofa so that I don't think about it. I need to physically separate work and my personal life.

    If, for any reason, she cannot get a work laptop, I would not recommend installing a Linux distro because her livelihood depends on it.

  • Meta is adding ridiculous ‘rate limits’ and a soft paywall to its smart glasses

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  • Non-paywalled: https://archive.ph/vGVor

    Complete Article:Would you pay $20 a month for access to AI hardware you already own? That appears to be one of Meta’s next bets. This week, it quietly announced that your glasses’ Conversation Focus feature will soon be limited to three hours of use per month, unless you pay for a $19.99 Meta One Premium subscription.

    In a help article, the company insists that it won’t require a subscription to use your glasses, period; it’s merely erecting a “rate limit” for certain AI features. Even premium subscribers will only get 15 hours of Conversation Focus per month under that “rate limit,” it claims.

    Problem is, Meta’s rate limit is ridiculous. The Conversation Focus feature, which amplifies the voice of the person you’re speaking to so you can hear better in noisy environments, is not something that should plausibly be rate-limited, because it doesn’t use Meta’s servers. It runs on-device, using the chips inside the glasses that you’ve already purchased. I turned off my internet, and it kept working.Meta’s description of “rate limits.”Meta’s description of “rate limits.” Image: Meta

    Here’s how the company introduced it last year: “[C]onversation focus uses your AI glasses’ open-ear speakers, beamforming technology, and real-time spatial processing to dynamically amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to.”

    Not only does it avoid Meta’s servers, but Conversation Focus doesn’t technically require an internet connection at all. I double-checked by turning off my phone’s Wi-Fi and cellular, turning on Airplane Mode, and I was still able to use Conversation Focus just fine by tapping a button on my phone.

    Does Meta have some secret licensing deal with another company that costs it money every time a person uses Conversation Focus? Failing that, the rate limit sounds utterly bogus.

    Meta is feeling some financial pressure trying to make AI happen, recently laying off around 10 percent of its entire workforce — around 8,000 people — to help offset its AI investment costs. It also recently managed to make three pairs of AI glasses $80 cheaper by nixing the Ray-Ban name. But perhaps ditching the branding isn’t the only way it plans to subsidize that move.

    At a time when hardware is getting increasingly expensive, I suppose this isn’t as controversial as Meta quietly beginning to embed a facial recognition upgrade for these glasses in millions of phones, code that it has since quietly removed. Still, I’m filing this under “Meta will ruin its smart glasses by being Meta.”

    We asked Meta if it could explain the move and whether the company plans to put other on-device features behind a subscription. Meta did not reply to those questions, but it did reach out to make it even clearer that the subscription is optional. “Most people will use Conversation Focus without hitting the monthly limit. The subscription is for power users who want expanded access and additional benefits like premium device support,” Meta spokesperson Tyler Yee tells The Verge.

    “Out of the box, you’ll get core AI features like voice assistant, live translation, look and ask, and more. The subscription simply unlocks more access and more powerful features on your AI glasses. Currently, this only includes expanded access to Conversation Focus and premium device support.”

    That “currently” does make it sound like Meta might put more features into a subscription bucket, but it also sounds like a few features will stay out of it.

  • Florida bans local governments from pursuing net-zero emissions goals

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  • So... A "small" government is acting like a big brother...

  • Self hosting: real game starts today

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  • Great advice.

  • Recommended mini pc for a homelab?

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  • Because you can buy something like this Sata drive enclosure: https://a.co/d/004sj6TS, and power it with a small ATX power supply.

  • Recommended mini pc for a homelab?

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  • You can power the drives using a standard PC power supply. You can also use a switch like this one to power them: https://ebay.io/m/jRSozI