soylentcola

Not to minimize Meta's push for these things, but there have been devices that do this for quite a while now. You can get tiny cameras hidden in pens, watches, glasses, and all sorts of other items.

It's just that in the past, these were sold by janky companies selling them as spy/hidden cameras, not massive multinational data brokers like Meta.

Surprised it hasn't been closed already. Sometime back before I left entirely in 2017, I tried making an account that wasn't tied to my real name, email, phone number, etc. and after a few days they asked for proof of ID because they couldn't tie me to their "social graph" or whatever. Didn't give ID and they disabled the account.

Yeeeap. Was thinking about that and the Matrix mostly.

Not sure it's possible to say this without being pithy, but haven't there been stories told, perhaps TV episodes and films made, regarding the concept of using human bodies to generate power in support of machine intelligence?

Seems a little on the nose to me, but I guess some days it's hard to tell what's a gag and what's a legit pitch.

I always wondered if "Lightspeed Briefs" was a pun on the "FTL" abbreviation that Fruit of the Loom used at the time (no idea if they still do).

Good thing that could never be used as a "death ray".

> shoot in whatever orientation fits the content or situation best.

I'm with you there. It's the same for shooting still photos.

...but that doesn't stop people from shooting portrait video and then constantly panning back and forth because the whole (crowd, landscape, giant sea monster, whatever) doesn't fit in the frame.

And then (at least around here) they often make you scan a QR code in order to see the menu. It's often not a direct link to the menu, but rather a third party site or a link shortener that tracks traffic for marketing data.

Oh yeah, it was awful by then. At my store you made essentially minimum wage plus a sort of commission for addons/upsales (as long as they were over a certain percentage of your total sales) and flat bonuses for new cell contracts, phone/accessory sales.

Theoretically it could add up to a passable paycheck for retail, but they had it set up so that only a few senior staff ever got enough hours/good shifts where you could conceivably hit the addon percentages needed to qualify for commissions. So the only way to make any money was to sell cell plans, phones, and accessories. The whole store was totally focused on hawking cell plans.

Then we had to go to monthly meetings an hour out of town on our own dime. That's where they talked at us about the company and how cool and great it was. Such a shitty place to work. IIRC there was a dedicated web forum called "RadioShackSucks" or something like that where staff complained to each other.

Can confirm. Finally got the GPU for my new PC in 2020 by (first) showing up at Microcenter on days when deliveries were expected, then eventually joining a discord where people posted daily updates when stock actually showed up (once I got tired of driving a half hour there and back a few times).

In the end, a helpful discord member was already at the store, purchased a GPU for me, and held it until I could get there and buy it off him. Due to the shortage there was no risk of him stuck holding the "bag" but it was a huge favor from my end. Wasn't scalping but I still threw in an extra $20 just for helping out.

The person in question published it openly on the internet (Twitter). Not gonna bother digging up the proof again because it's been widely reported and not denied - just minimized as some cheeky edgelord humor.

Not to be too pedantic, but aren't those typically being purchased under some other license that doesn't apply to you (bulk, oem, cheaper country, etc) and then resold in violation of the licensing terms?

And that's when they're not just "pirated" themselves?

Seems at that point you might as well just skip paying whatever questionable middleman in involved if you're not concerned about abiding by TOS or license.

And (sadly in my case) Paypal.

In 2020/21 I was working from home like many people. I'd been lucky enough to get an RTX3080 for my new computer build and decided to experiment with mining ETH during downtime - it was winter and the office was cold anyway...

"Made" a few hundred bucks over the course of a couple of months and had it in Coinbase. They had a setup where you could sell for USD and deposit in a Paypal account, so I logged into mine - which I hadn't used in a few years - and deposited the funds.

Shortly after, my account was frozen for suspicious activity. I was told that there was no way to reverse this or obtain any further info or explanation. The funds were not returned to my Coinbase account.

In the end I just said screw it and chalked it up as a learning experience. I hadn't really created anything of value so I didn't feel as angry as if I'd been cheated out of actual work. Still, it pissed me off that as far as I can tell, Paypal essentially stole a few hundred dollars from me and there was nothing I could do about it.

I had figured that by using "legit" services and following along with all of their KYC/tax policies I would be safe. In retrospect I probably would've been better off cashing out via some questionable crypto exchange. Haven't messed with any of it since.

I disable them with a browser addon (and Revanced on mobile) because I seriously never want to watch a 30 second video on Youtube. Having to scroll past useless snippets when I'm looking for something had borderline-ruined Youtube for me.

As much as I would love this (not interested in a portable game console, but definitely interested in a new top-of-line set-top-box) I can't imagine this is what's been holding nVidia back on a Shield refresh.

If anything, the Switch was a way to sell a boatload of existing chips. They've had plenty of opportunity to put out a Shield 2 in the meantime, but instead have backed off their focus on game streaming and other main features of a set-top-box.

I'd love to see it happen, but I feel like the Shield is just not a big enough seller for them to put many resources behind an update. Prove me wrong, nVidia! TVs have only gotten worse in terms of embedded systems and software, and I don't have (or plan on) buying into the Apple ecosystem enough to make AppleTV compelling.

Maybe it was all the people who'd followed the same navigation.

I've got far from perfect pitch, but I can relate. In high school (mid 90's) I took up guitar and figured out that I could use (the memory of) the intro to "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses as a way to mentally get an "E" in my head to tune the lowest string and go from there.

I'd heard the song so many times that I found I could recall the low, then high E at the start and that's really all you need to get the rest in tune.

* until you zoom in or look at it on a screen larger than you'd hold in your hand.

Seriously, even on a modern Pixel (mine) and iPhone (gf's), I'm often disappointed in the level of detail you find once you want to crop an image or zoom in on something distant/small.

The software has come a long way and does incredible things within the limitations of such tiny lenses and sensors. But I've got much lower resolution images from point and shoot cameras in the mid/late 2000's that show more detail and none of the weird software sharpening artifacts of a 20-40+ megapixel phone pic.

I'm a little surprised that with the current state of electronics and machine learning there hasn't been (as far as I'm aware) a resurgence of similar toy robots - a sort of updated Omnibot as it were.

I remember wanting one of those so badly as a kid and they didn't even do much.

Users of what, I wonder?

That said, I've no idea where the numbers come from, but it covers some of the possibilities.

I'm usually mixed. I pay for access to some things. I download copies of some things without paying for them. Some of the latter category are things I just want to check out (software that doesn't offer a demo/that I might mess around with once). Some are things I ostensibly pay for already (ex: movies or shows I get as part of an Amazon Prime subscription but are now frequently interrupted by advertisements). Occasionally I'm just lazy, I'll admit. Sometimes it's just quicker to torrent a movie than to hunt down the best/only place to rent it.

The one thing I won't do is pay (actual) pirates like these for access. I figure it's on me if I watch a movie I didn't pay to rent/stream/whatever. But I'm not supporting god-knows-what sketchy organization with actual money. When I spend money it'll be going to the legit rights owner.

To be fair, regional burns are basically Burning Man without the techbro yuppie contingent. A lot more randos, hippies, and weirdos. More like summer camp for grownups than a place to show off on IG or whatever people use these days.

*(Caveat, haven't been to one in the last 5 or 6 years so things may have changed. As always, "it was better next year!")

Really? I get annoyed because after 4 or 5 decent picks based on whatever song I start with, it inevitably shifts to the most well-known, overplayed singles by any related band.

Yeah...but when I started playing with Rebirth (software) in the late 90s, I remember recreating that song as I learned how to sequence drums, bass, and lead synths. It's definitely a corny song, but I needed to branch out from recreating "Blue Monday" (despite it being a better song).

On the Xmas theme - "Little Saint Nick". That one always gets me.

It's the repetitive, bored-sounding "Christmas comes this time each year..."

Like, no shit! That's how holidays work.

Mostly. But they're also doing it as a gag, so you're expected to understand the joke is two ostensible "losers" claiming rock greatness (and doing it with a capable example of the stereotypical bombast you'd expect from the music being parodied/paid homage).

The lyrics are cheesy, but I find the music, harmonies/performance to be just fine. Wouldn't be the first decent song with crap lyrics.

I was "Lucky" to hear him join Radiohead on stage to sing one of their songs back in 98 (iirc).

> I couldn't get into Nickelback personally because they came in on a wave of similar music that I was generally over by the time they got big.

I feel like that's often part of it. Something that represents peak (whatever) in terms of a sound. The sort of highly-polished result that almost sounds like it was AI-generated by a model trained on exactly what was popular over the past few years.

Of course, you don't need AI to do it - just slightly more human and manual analysis of trends, sales, marketing, and production techniques.

I believe you are thinking of Flipboard (still around, but a bit different nowadays).

Whoa, thanks for the rec. Really digging it.