Republican fools.

There just aren’t any good deals any more. Prices for everything have gone crazy in the last few months. For coding LLMs the cloud services may now be the least worst value, by design, until they hike the prices.

That said, I still just paid way too much for a used graphics card so I could do many things locally, because I just don’t want to give the likes of Sam Altman a single penny.

To be weighed against the profits from having all that new data on user identities.

The grocery stores near me have big signs with Canadian flags on, marking some shelves as all Canadian. They wouldn’t bother if they didn’t think it would help sales.

Yes, but they’ll rule that using free open-source software is terrorism.

As long as you keep it below 88 miles per hour you’ll be fine.

Elon Musk’s satellites are currently re-destroying the ozone layer as they burn up on re-entry. And he plans to launch many tens of thousands more of them.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-elon-musks-dying-satellites-could-hurt-the-ozone-layer

approx 3 hrs.

I’m done for if they ever come after me. My battery lasts about 2 minutes on a good day.

Climate change is real and catastrophic, demands radical and urgent change, and has been globally recognized by scientists for decades. The ways many corporations and governments have framed it, and the non-action disguised as action they have promoted, are self-serving bullshit. You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s no coincidence that capitalism comes along with an emphasis on individualism and “expressing yourself” through consumption. It’s designed to train people out of collective thinking (class consciousness) and collective action, and it has been very effective.

Yes, as long as the monitor isn’t designed to stop functioning unless it’s given a network connection.

I was thinking of the second part of the article, under the heading “Smart monitors”, which talks about monitors running their own independent OS with the ability to report on what you’re doing without going through software running on the computer. That seems like a different threat than those monitors that just cause a malicious driver to be installed in Windows. The monitor’s spying activity would not depend on the host OS or drivers, though it would need its own network connection. The obvious thing would be to block that, but I hear some smart TVs are designed not to function unless they have an internet connection, and they’d probably try that with smart monitors too. Hopefully then they just wouldn’t manage to sell any.

I understood this section to mean that the smart monitor runs its own OS and sends its own network traffic, not depending on software running on the PC:

Smart monitors connect to the Internet and run their own operating system (OS) and apps. They can be useful for performing tasks, like video conferencing, watching a show from a streaming service, or managing your smart home without attaching a computer.

LG’s and Samsung’s smart monitors use the same ad-serving OSes that their respective smart TVs do, meaning they’re poised to use automatic content recognition (ACR). Users of LG and Samsung smart monitors, including reviews site RTINGs, have shown the displays being able to track user activity.

So then you’d have the same challenges as with a smart TV: unless you block its network access, it can report on every image you display. And I’ve heard that some smart TVs refuse to function unless you give them internet access, so smart monitors might work similarly. Then the only solution would be not to buy a smart monitor, even if you’re in full control of the PC.

Linux won’t save you from smart monitors. It’ll be like every OS suddenly gets Windows Recall, except LG and Samsung have the database, not you.

Well, that’s a relief to all of us, I’m sure.

In a long social media post on Monday, Trump once again referred to Carney as “governor” – a jibe that is associated with his threats to annex Canada – and attacked Ford.

“Someone should get these clowns to “fall in line” or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!” Trump threatened in his post.

Yeah, let’s not negotiate with that.

You can if the laptop is extremely expensive. But the laptop is extremely expensive.

Dementia.

I’ll raise my glass of delicious, cool Coca Cola to that!

With enough users on the Fediverse, the astroturfing will come. It’s not really inherently resistant to brand placements etc. It’s just not big enough to get corporate attention.