Comment Nope (Score 2) 23
You have to log in to use it. No thanks.
You have to log in to use it. No thanks.
I suppose that in one way it's just art imitating the past, the fact that they are fake likely doesn't even reigster in the heads of the people they are trying to impress. They are probably too young to appreciate having a book collection themselves. To them it's a bit of throwback decor. Amongst my older friends, we can all appreciate a good library. For the younger people I know, it's mostly a curiosity unless they are one of the rare ones enthralled by physical books, or educated in a profession that still relies on them. (highly technical professions with reference manuals, i.e. mechanical engineering, physics or perhaps a literature student or language professor)
I have read 95% of the books I own, and I only keep the ones I really enjoyed, would want to read again, technical references I refer to, or really good art books. This all adds up to about 400 books over several bookshelves in my office. My reading chair is situated in front of them; I enjoy looking at the collection. Every good book has a memory that makes me feel happy and I know that I can pull them out for a re-read at any time. No subscriptions, electricity or reliance on the lack of real-time electronic censorship needed. On the down side, it is a more 'stuff' to own, but I can't think of what I'd want to keep more if I had to choose between everything else I own and the books. I suppose I am hoarding them for an as-yet planned retirement when I can go through them again and read them at will before finally disposing of the collection, likely to friends for the rare books, libraries for the decent ones and probably the trash unfortunately for the dog-eared mass market paperback hard science fiction novels I love so much.
...will it still make you a sandwich?
It's already better because I don't need to log in or create an account to use it. ChatGPT wanted my phone number and that's when I closed the browser window. There is absolutely no good reason for that. So that being said this is the first time I've played with one of these AI chat services. As a quick test I asked it some historical questions around which there are urban legends, and fortunately it answered correctly. It has potential.
At the end he is still trying to tie it into the Metaverse. I can't believe he hasn't given up on something that time and time again has been proven that nobody is interested in it whatsoever.
I don't think he made his point very clear. It's very strange.
I'm a big dropbox user so hopefully we won't see any quality drops in service. I like dropbox as an independent service away from google and microsoft. Been a user since nearly the beginning.
Any other Vegas Pro users out there? I've been a fan since it started life as a multi-track audio editor at Sonic Foundry. It was then picked up by Sony, and now Magix and is still developed with regular releases.
While I come from a television background, these days I use it to produce YouTube videos exclusively and it works very well for that. It also still has a 'pay a flat price and own it' model, although they are now also dipping into the subscription pond.
I like Vegas because it has a very fast and highly interactive interface. Every once in a while I go back and poke at Adobe Premiere because I have a CS subscription, but I find the premiere UI and interactivity to be absolute garbage in comparison to Vegas. Premiere sucked all the way back in the 90s and it still sucks now in my opinion.
Back on topic, I was always familiar with Resolve primarily as a piece of effects software, I didn't know it was popular for general editing.
I refer to the site all the time via a browser. I'm leery of weather apps in terms of data collection, but I'd happily pay for one that I knew wasn't hoovering up personal data. (I usually say no to all unnecessary permissions but lately articles indicate that android apps have some backdoor options to still collect despite permissions)
I think the real problem is figuring out which weather apps are malware and spyware. (probably most of them.) Weather is such an easy service to provide thanks to NOAA and other agencies, it's not surprising there are zillions of apps out there doing just that in hopes of making a little ad revenue.
What useful weather apps is everyone using that add value to the raw data?
Despite the marketing of internet connected device manufacturers, all evidence suggests that the level of security is inherently lower for any home safety device connected to the network, and that any convenience does not override this.
I had a Dell Precision that lasted over 10 years. Battery was long dead and not worth buying another, just used it with external power. It ran a copy of Solidworks that was installed but could not be transferred so I kept using it until I could afford to buy a new license and a new laptop when I started using SW for business again. The new version of SW I have can be activated and deactivated between computers without a current subscription so I'm no longer constrained by that factor.
The new laptop is a Lenovo 17" with a quadro chipset for SW and I'm very happy with it. It should last a long, long time. I take care of my machines and am very careful with Windows settings so they stay zippy and not loaded down with junk.
My current desktop tower machine is one a friend built probably 10 years ago, I upgraded it with a newer Nvidia card and it plays most games at 4K just fine. Running Windows 7. Steam will no longer support Win7 after this summer but I don't do a lot of gaming these days anyways. Can use the laptop for that. Eventually I will switch to using the laptop as my primary machine, with a docking station when I am home. I'm on the road so much the laptop is a better choice.
I don't have any multi-decade longevity stories although I do have older laptops here that still run but I don't use them. Capacitors tend to go bad so I don't trust anything really old. I'm on an Amiga enthusiast group on facebook and the first thing everyone does is replace all the capacitors on the motherboard and the battery. I'm content to use software emulation to re-live my Amiga days, don't need another space and time consuming hobby.
I'll add my voice to the chorus. Don't downvote these posts. I met him in the mid-90s and got the same vibes. This has been covered on slashdot before many moons ago in another draper thread, when more people were around that remembered it.
It's fine to do a documentary on Draper, but don't whitewash it. You need to tell all the complexities of his character, good and bad. Any documentary that does not talk about this aspect of John's behavior is a PR piece and not a documentary. John was good at talking himself up and I wouldn't be surprised if he himself is trying to set this up.
I hope it reduces their ad spend so I don't have to hear about them on just about every single podcast I listen to. (until I click the skip button).
I received a free 1st gen iPhone back in the day as part of a promotion. I remember the browser included with it (Safari?) auto-wrapped the text when you pinch zoomed, and nothing I've used since then did that. I use Firefox on android currently but I'll check out Opera if it has that much desired feature and I can still use ad blocking software. I don't understand why that feature hasn't caught on more widely. It never impacted the page formatting in a negative way, I was surprised at how well it worked. It was useful for slashdot in particular.
So is the best way to stop it at this point at the router level? Of course they doesn't help when you're taking a laptop on the road. I try to disinfect and de-bloat new windows installs as much as possible but it's getting very hard to do.
Playing network doom in the SGI lab at Stanford in the early-mid 90s with Sergey Brin and Larry page when they were students.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce