4grams

So it’s working as intended. It’s always been the Hotel Cloudifonia.

Pretty much. I’m a data hoarder, to a degree. My homebuilt, Ship of Theseus NAS is about 15 years old, and it contains data going back over 20. I save everything I produce.

I figure that one day, this data of mine will be fed into a system for future use, in the vein of how they construct people in the Star Trek Holodeck. So, I feel it’s up to me to curate that data, and be sure it’s accurate and reflects who I am.

These days it’s obvious that it will eventually be turned into training data for an LLM, but then at least, my data will have some structure and personality to it. Maybe someday a joke will be cracked for someone that came from a pattern I established. Probably not, but one can dream.

No, I think I can downgrade it, I need to find an older version of the firmware as they don’t have it available anymore. I think I need a 2024 version.

I do have auto updates turned off, I should just block it at the router.

I don’t know about brother anymore. I have one I bought because it would work with 3rd party ink. I updated the firmware and am now locked out from using anything but brother. I would up finding a hack to get it to stop checking the ink level, so I can at least print, but it’s a temporary fix (have had to do it a few times), and it makes it unable to tell me how much ink is left. No big deal, I just run the cartridges dry, but it’s less functional than when I bought it…

Nutshell, I used to trust bother, not anymore so an open option is a big desire of mine. If this is halfway decent, I’ll pick one up.

Same, I just figure if they want to use windows, then they need to accept all the work impacting problems and stoppages. Just like how they accept the security implications of an all windows network…

It’s so entrenched though, and the typical user doesn’t know any different these days so it’s all windows and cloud now. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for these things, but it doesn’t have to be the default all the time…

Bicameral mind due for a comeback I see.

It came to me last night, how all this AI and the difficulties obtaining hardware. This is all them trying to end the idea of ownership, at least of your data. They want to control all the data, so everything you do, every picture you take, every game you play, every essay you write, will be only available in the cloud. We are getting close to the point where are must pay for every bit of our own data that we access.

This is the inevitable result. I’m very glad I’ve spent years building my own library of content. I just hope I can continue getting replacement hardware to keep it alive.

Just had this thought, and realized all my backups had been through a flood. I wound up with several damaged disks, but was able to get all the content off of them, damage was to the outside edges, and most of them didn’t have much data written.

I have a Blu-ray burner, but I’ve never burned one (only a couple DVD’s). Probably never will.

This is really about training AI, isn’t it. They’ve tapped nearly all the sources of human text output already, so now they want to create as much more of it as possible, as quickly as possible. They will tap into conversations and use it as a new data source, mark my words.

Jokes on them, I’ve been a windows guy so long they have always been directories; I started in the dos days.

I understand the authors reasons, but for me personally, having paid for the app, I’ll use it until it no longer suits my needs. Right now it does early what I need and does not cause me any issues. As soon as the enshittification hits me though, I’ll abandon it for something else. I also would not recommend someone purchase it, given the new pricing, and the availability of free alternatives. Had they been there when I paid for Plex, I’d be using them instead.

It’s something new anyway. I’ve dealt with bureaucracy my whole career, but mostly about shuffling numbers from one spreadsheet to another. This one is about helping shuffle people from one place to another. So, I’m used to slow, deliberate pace and hitting political walls. I’m hoping this time at least it’s doing something tangible.

I had nearly this exact conversation with my son on the way home tonight. Different details, but the same lesson. The world has abandoned practicality in favor of aesthetics and grift. I have quit several jobs because of the awful short term thinking, some of them good jobs that were the envy of my peers.

I start in the public sector next week, where I get to do things that have a direct impact on thousands of people in the state. I was hired specifically because of my practicality. I sincerely hope this is what I’ve been looking for.

This would have been a baffling question to me just a few months ago. But lately as I’ve been expanding my self hosting journey, I have realized that most people don’t use computers anymore except for at work. I just assumed everyone needed and wanted a PC, but my kids only care about them as game consoles, any other task is handled by phones or tablets.

So, these days I’m putting more effort into stuff that can be used for both. Im trying to de-big-tech myself and the cloud stuff is where we are mostly locked in. Evaluating Nextcloud at the moment and it’s maybe what I need; works great everywhere I’ve tried it so far. I do worry about enshittification though.

Yes and no, I only buy refurbs these days, so long as they work out of the box, they have been far more reliable than retail drives from a box store.

Definitely higher incidents of DOA drives, but the ones that work, have been pretty solid.

Still don’t trust spinning rust, so in addition to dual parity raid, I also have a full backup copy. But I no longer have reservations about refurb drives…

I like the name, and I’ve got lots of projects in various states that I’d love to share. I’ll check it out.

Completely agree, which is why I put so much blame on the voters. People continue to be incredibly easy to manipulate, which is what my reply was about. We should have seen a democratic wave, and collapse of republicans. Again, not because the dems were so awesome, but because of the clear, unambiguous horrors of the orange anus.

Don’t get me wrong, the musks and other powers that be deserve all the blame as well, but those such forces are always what we’re up against. Yet people still absorb the message subconsciously and vote on the feels they were manipulated into having.

Dems without a doubt deserve a lot of blame too, but we can deal with incompetence over maliciousness.

*Trump won the popular vote because Kamala was cosigning a genocide

How did that work out you fucking morons (not you, unless you were one of them)? This is not a defense of Harris, but it was plain as day that this orange asshole would be an order of magnitude worse on the issue.

Weaponized incompetence is malice. They are about power, and it’s a huge display of power to put morons who cannot think for themselves in positions of authority. They know that these people are useful idiots, and they know how much it demoralizes the rest of us.

ACAB isn’t just a slogan, it’s a strategy.

Excellent reference.