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Rob T Firefly

@ rob_t_firefly @lemmy.world

Posts
14
Comments
790
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Asus and Dell announce new mini PCs for Windows 365 | Goodbye local OS

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  • It must be noted that Big Tech is currently engaged in artificially forcing hardware prices upward, and that's going on while Microsoft continues their generations-long quest to deprecate old hardware by forcing new versions of their OS out of compatibility with it.

    There are so many ways they're actively screwing their customers by making things tangibly worse, and then conveniently showing up to "help" by selling us more of their shit.

  • A flimsy argument for the sake of scooting about in the desert

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  • Of course Brent Spiner had to wear those safety goggles when they filmed, but I also love the in-universe idea of Data putting on a piece of safety equipment completely unnecessary for himself just to fit in with his friends.

  • A flimsy argument for the sake of scooting about in the desert

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  • What are some things you think of when you see something related to your field outside of work hours?

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  • Among other things I'm an audio editor and producer, and badly-done audio really grates on my brain. When clips have been poorly chopped together, when a character running away from a monster screams the exact same scream twice, when statements are clearly frankenclips made of fuck knows how many different recordings, my brain raises the alarm.

    This is especially rough when reality TV competition shows are on. I like Drag Race, for example, but RuPaul is employing some idiots hacking at spools of worn-out tape with rusty knives or something.

    "I'm having trouble with this challenge!"

  • Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs

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  • That prospect becomes less and less likely the more government is bought and paid for by Big Tech.

  • Acceptable loss.

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  • New sodium ion battery stores twice the energy and desalinates seawater

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  • To answer your question we'll need to conduct a series of electrical tests on your left ball. Please report to the lab as soon as possible, and wear loose pants.

  • Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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  • Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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  • Our microorganism ancestors also did all those things, and they were far beyond anything an LLM can do. Turning a given list of words into numbers, doing a string of math to those numbers, and turning the resulting numbers back into words is not consciousness or wisdom and never will be.

  • Car Wash Test on 53 leading AI models: "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"

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  • LLMs are not children. Children can have experiences, learn things, know things, and grow. Spicy autocomplete will never actually do any of these things.

  • Hey, guys. Is it a good idea to dunk PC parts in isopropyl alcohol?

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  • Thank you! You're nice.

  • Hey, guys. Is it a good idea to dunk PC parts in isopropyl alcohol?

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  • IPA is either isopropyl alcohol or India pale ale. Best to be sure of which alcohol-relevant situation you are in before deciding which to apply.

  • Hey, guys. Is it a good idea to dunk PC parts in isopropyl alcohol?

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  • When I used to do computer repair for work I had a hard limit against working on stuff from a smoker's household or office. Not only am I too asthmatic to enjoy spending time in such a place, but the thick sticky crud in every nook and cranny of the machine made any hardware job far more trouble than it was worth to me.

    I'm still willing to occasionally be the "computer guy" for certain friends and family, but smokers can figure something else out because I'm not touching it. (And yes, weed smoke counts.)

  • Show me the real Enterprise.

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  • In Alameda!

  • What movie feels impossible to watch without captions?

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  • This whistle fights fascists | How thousands of 3D-printed whistles are derailing ICE.

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  • Whatever people in power try to stir up about this, it's literally impossible to legislate and block shapes from being 3D-printed. Any attempts to do so are a fool's errand, and/or just being used to justify misguided (and doomed) attempts to lock down 3DP technology for other reasons (read DRM/copyright forces in big business.) Blocking parts that might be for a gun from being printed simply cannot be done.

    https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/04/what-a-load-of-filament-the-case-against-3d-printer-gun-detection/

    https://michaelweinberg.org/blog/2026/02/04/3d-printer-gun-screen/

  • The new Microsoft copilot key is impossible to properly remap.

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  • You can remap that key on a hardware level with a little flathead screwdriver. 🪛 🗑️

  • Are we done with business cards?

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  • What if there's a QR code on the card? Then it's basically the same amount of work as getting that NFC tap.

  • Are we done with business cards?

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  • I feel like a business card is something physical to hand people so they have it to look back at later. If you're just looking to NFC tap your contact info onto people's phones, why wouldn't you just use your own phone to do it?

    This reminds me of something tangentially related. Sometime around the turn of the century I worked at a small business where some vendor came in to solicit interest in his business' services, and left a working CD-ROM business card. That mildly impressed the manager because CD-ROMs were still pretty fancy and nobody there had seen a business card like that before, and when run the card had some simple Flash-like slideshow thing with a little video clip or two about their business (which was still impressive when you couldn't really have embedded video clips on your average dialup-friendly website.) Around a week later that same vendor returned asking for the card back because "they're pretty expensive to make and I want to give it to my next prospect," and the manager's impression of him went from mildly impressed to thinking this guy was too hilariously amateurish to bother engaging with.