…When mentally ill people are put in charge of the nation’s government…

This doesn’t help people for whom their ISP doesn’t even provide IPv6.

I run Telus Business Fibre so I can have whatever port I want open, running whatever service I want, and a clutch of static IPv4 addresses for legacy stuff.

Telus Business has zero IPv6 availability, and is projected to not have IPv6 for at least the next decade.

Like, fuck me.

I know this is an April Fool’s, I’m just lambasting one of Canada’s largest fibre Internet providers for their wholesale inability to remain modern and effective.

Considering that all other alternatives are either

• extremely difficult if not impossible for non-technical users to leverage, or
• much, much worse, up to even eagerly giving out your data

I consider Signal to be the best option out there. It’s not perfect, but nothing is. It simply is the best general option out there, by far, for a general audience.

Yes, you can be totally secure, untraceable, and ultimately unfindable. But being cut into pieces, with each separate piece entombed in its own barrel of concrete, and each barrel dropped into a different oceanic trench, tends to be a bit beyond what I consider to be reasonable to achieve that.

That just defeats the IP part of the KVM and in that case you’d better stick with a traditional KVM.

Video cables and USB cables were never designed for a 20m run. Most have difficulties beyond a 2-5m distance.

My servers will be in my basement, at the other end of the house. My C&C machine will be in my office. The entire purpose of remote KVM is such that I don’t have to hoof it all the way down into the basement just to do something quick. Or go back-and-forth if there is something in my office I have to reference while doing the work.

In fact, I suspect that network KVM is exceedingly useful for anyone whose machines are more than five steps away. Even across the room makes a hell of a lot of sense.

You totally misunderstood the comment.

If all the KVM units were on an airgapped system, there is no way to reach those units other than physically sitting down at the C&C workstation that is meant to interface with them and display their output. Because that machine is also on the airgapped network, and is not reachable from the Internet.

It’s no different than a traditional KVM at that point, aside from that C&C machine being anywhere where Ethernet can reach (traditional KVM units being rather distance-constrained).

Now, if you need mobile/off-site access to this system, you put a second NIC into that C&C workstation. First one for the KVM network, the other for world+dog, and then you use a trusted remote-access system to access the C&C workstation, and block it off from anything else on that second Internet-accessible network as best as possible.

I mean, you want secure? Truly secure? Then disassemble all your computers, put each individual part into its own barrel of cement, and then drop each barrel into its own deep-oceanic abyssal trench. THAT is how you get true security.

For everything else, there are reasonable trade-offs that discourage all but nation-state players or people with wrenches.

Both classic Notepad and classic WordPad can be downloaded and installed from third-party sites.

However, to thoroughly neuter the enshittified versions and ensure the classic versions are used in all workflows can take a bit more than what the installers recommend. Primarily, I would recommend adding the *.bak extension to the enshittified versions then make (IIRC) junction links from the classic ones to where the enshittified ones are sitting. This ensures that if anything reaches for the enshittified ones, the junction links are there to redirect the action to the classic versions.

Both classic Notepad and classic WordPad can be downloaded and installed from third-party sites.

However, to thoroughly neuter the enshittified versions and ensure the classic versions are used in all workflows can take a bit more than what the installers recommend. Primarily, I would recommend adding the *.bak extension to the enshittified versions then make (IIRC) junction links from the classic ones to where the enshittified ones are sitting. This ensures that if anything reaches for the enshittified ones, the junction links are there to redirect the action to the classic versions.

If betting on Polymarket, you would actually have to stump up that money first, and the other person would have to do the same with whatever bid they wanted to use. Then, in order to get any kind of reasonable payback, you would need thousands of other people to make a bet for or against, using their own money.

The payout isn’t on someone making a bet on themselves, no-one else would bet for or against that as the stakes are so small. The payout is on large-scale events that are - ostensibly - out of the control of the bettor or bettee.

Polymarket is no different than betting on the outcomes of horse races or sports games, it just opens up the thing being betted on to anything and everything. People will still bet. The key is how “un-rigged” it appears to be.

There are ways for normal home users to bodily rip this shit out, but it takes some work and technical knowledge to effectively rip-and-tear in ways that work for you.

Some of the tools are also not the most user-friendly, expect the user to be a power user with deep familiarity with Windows, and have non-obvious workflows that may confuse a majority of average users.

While it takes about 8-16 hours of concerted effort, there are ways to castrate Windows into a mild approximation of what it was before.

The big question mark is Windows 12… and whether AI and spyware/malware features such as Recall will be baked into core functionality such that it will be impossible to remove or reliably deactivate.

I’m still with Windows for now, owing to requirements that have no non-Windows alternative (which include supporting and actually opening client data files for the desktop version of Quicken, for example), but I do foresee a time when I would reliably extract my last foot out of the Windows ecosystem.

Thankfully, their server products still appear to be enshittification-free. For now.

As I pointed out in another root comment, the average - depending on the model being tested - tends to sit between 60% and 80%. But this is with no restriction on source materials… the LLMs are essentially pulling from world+dog in that case

So this opens up an interesting option for users, in that hallucinations/inaccuracies can be controlled for and potentially reduced by as much as ⅔ simply by restricting the model to those documents/resources that the user is absolutely certain contains the correct answer.

I mean, 25% is still stupidly high. In any prior era, even 2.5% would have been an unacceptably high error rate for a business to stomach. But source-restriction seems to be a somewhat promising guardrail to use for the average user doing personal work.

How much do large language models actually hallucinate when answering questions grounded in provided documents?

Okay, this is looking promising, at least in terms of the most important qualifications being plainly stated in the opening line.

Because the amount of hallucinations/inaccuracies “in the wild” - depending on the model being tested - runs about 60-80%. But then again, this would be average use on generalized data sets, not questions focusing on specific documentation. So of course the “in the wild” questions will see a higher rate.

This also helps users, as it shows that hallucinations/inaccuracies can be reduced by as much as ⅔ by simply limiting LLMs to specific documentation that the user is certain contains the desired information, rather than letting them trawl world+dog.

Very interesting!

That may be the case, but the most irritating thing is that thy fill all available spots with the lowest-capacity chips that meet the requested provisioning spec, instead of taking the requested provisioning and using the fewest higher-capacity chips needed to meet the provisioning spec. The latter, at least, would leave spots open for an authorized repair location to manually solder on more approved chips of compatible spec.

Read it again. It occurs even with a full system wipe and re-install from Microsoft-direct media, or even a full hard drive swap. It is wholly independent of what is on the hard drive, the only restriction being that it can only successfully run when injected into Windows.

OpenSUSE user since about 2005/2006.

My headcanon (in this theme) is OpenSUSE being a tall androgynous-y female tomboy cosplaying as a strait-laced male exec done up in the latest tailored pinstripe German banker fashion, including matching waistcoat and fedora, with black trenchcoat suavely draped over the shoulders and hands in black leather gloves. And with the hair having just enough length and curl to be barely toeing past the line of decorum.

He’s already looking to disenfranchise many tens of millions of voters if he’s unable to cancel the midterm elections wholesale.

I’m sure that if there ever will be elections again, they will be purely performative and with a foregone conclusion, just like how North Korea has “elections”.

• https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty/

One example of many.

You must be new to tech to not remember this. Wasn’t all that long ago.

If you have the money and want simplicity, reliability, and interoperability, go for a Mac. Just clench your sphincter and maximize the RAM; min. 32Gb ought to be minimally appropriate for a 7-8yr lifespan of basic duties. And FFS, go for what your current data uses up ×2.5 or 1Tb, whichever is larger (vital performance reasons in that). Don’t get the smallest storage unless third-party upgrade options exist like for the Mac Mini M4. And remember: all RAM and a lot of storage is integrated these days, which is why you should always max it out; there is no upgrade path except wholesale replacement of the machine. CPU is largely immaterial unless you are doing truly heavy lifting like video editing or AI, so that can often be the lowest choice.

If you want freedom and truly unconstrained system, some form of Linux/BSD on a Framework system is the way to go. Or if a desktop, hand-assemble it yourself.

If you are going to stick with Windows, go for a business-class Dell. Trust me, it’ll be almost as $$$$ painful as a Mac, but these little f**kers are built to last. At least you can upgrade the RAM and on-board storage, although I honestly recommend not going under 32Gb for anything other than basic tasks. It’ll be a lot more zippy with 32Gb even if you spend the first week tearing all the AI and built-in spyware out of Windows.

You are correct, however they were malicious in nature and loaded on every boot from the UEFI/BIOS. They required Windows and auto-terminated the install if they already existed.

Goldfish memories by most muggles and normies.

Plus the latest shiny and feature FOMO.

And then you have procurement who are told to get the most at the least cost, allowing state-owned companies to undercut most competition. Without clearly-specified guidelines that exclude dangerous tech, most rank-and-file salarymen will be told by Dilbert bosses to order the hardware or look for a different job.