I see that Gurgle’s evil technocracy has blocked a few conservative outlets, but somehow missed blocking Splendid Isolation :
My few thousand daily Readers are doubtless not worth their attention. So capitalizing on their omission, here’s a pic of a gun:
That’s a Knights SR25 in the manly 7.62mm NATO (7.62x51mm), and it’s at Collectors.
May as well take advantage while I can.
Apparently, some “experts” (standard warning applies) over in Britishland (same warning) have come up with a list of activities that carry a risk of catching Chinkvirus cooties, ranked according to risk level:
All FYI — as much of what is listed is pretty much commonsense. I do wonder, though, how “protest march”, “rioting” and “looting” (some overlap) did not make the list.
Via Insty. I see the following announcement:
Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia are going to build a new software-defined computing architecture for automated vehicles based on the Nvidia DRIVE platform that will be installed across the fleet of next-generation Mercedes-Benz vehicles, starting in 2024.
“The entire fleet, every car from the entry A-classes to the S-classes, will have the highest-performance Nvidia AI supercomputer on board.”
Shapiro said that each of these new Mercedes vehicles will come with the full surround sensor suite installed and then, similar to how Tesla does things today, it will be up to owners to decide if they want to activate features, either when they purchase the car or after the fact with an over-the-air update. “There will be different business models, subscription service possibilities or one-time fees or things like that, depending on the region, that potentially turns the car into a fully upgradable, perpetually upgradable device, and there potentially could be be a Mercedes App Store,” he said.
Emphasis mine because Mercedes, being German, will make that particular feature disappear just as Porsche decided that drivers shouldn’t be allowed to change gears manually in their (Porsche’s) precious little Nazi pocket rockets.
My take on the above, therefore, rewords their announcement thus:
If you’re going to buy a Mercedes, buy one before the 2024 model year comes to market.
Me being me, I’d rather buy a still-older (but rebuilt) Mercedes, like this one (for about the same end-price of a comparably-sized new Merc):
…or even this Mercedes (which has had all the rebuilding done — see the pic gallery):
No silly tech doodads that cause your car to stop because some sub-system software failed, or because some AI algorithm decided that you’d done enough driving for the day, or that would require the entire IT Department at Daimler-Benz to fix it.
Just good, honest driving pleasure in a car with proven reliability. What Mercedes used to be renowned for.
My simple belief is this: we wouldn’t accept this kind of software built into our guns, so why should we allow it in our cars?
At over six years old (240 years in computer age, apparently), my laptop is showing signs of age — it’s slower than I am, more reluctant to work than the average Minneapolis looter, and falls over more often than the late Ted Kennedy at an open bar function.
Ditto, incidentally, my Logitech mouse, which is of the same vintage, and has developed the annoying habit of occasionally double-clicking when only one click is requested.
Tech Support II just clucked his tongue sorrowfully at my tale of woe, and metaphorically speaking adopted the tones of a doctor talking about a terminally-ill patient. Clearly, there is Nothing To Be Done.
So at some point today, I’m going over to Ye Olde Compooter Shoppe, and will buy replacements for both the above appliances, something I’ve been putting off for over a year because poverty. Now, like the man forced to choose between death by drowning or by a long fall to the concrete, I have no real choice left.
There may be only one post tomorrow while I grapple with the tiresome details of transferring all my stuff from the old hard drive to the new one, while deleting the megatons of unnecessary garbage which seems to infest all new PCs these days.
Bear with me in this trying time. I hate this shit.
All contributions to help defray said expense will be gratefully received (see the PayPal link over on the right hand side of the page, or paper to the Sooper-Seekrit mailing address).
Update: it appears as though my laptop’s memory chip has fallen over, and this particular Dell model doesn’t seem to allow for easy replacement thereof — assuming that’s indeed the problem. Anyway, I ordered a new laptop — and many MANY thanks for all your contributions to the cause. It should only get here in a week’s time, so posting will be light until then.
Please bear with me in these trying times.
Got sick of dealing with Chrome’s little quirks, so over the weekend I installed Firefox instead.
So far, so good. I was able to transfer my bookmarks over without too much hassle (once I’d figured it out), and installed AdBlock (which annoyingly, requires three menu clicks to temporarily disable it on a specific website, as opposed to only one on Chrome; but an ad-free existence is worth almost any inconvenience short of self-amputation).
That’s two conscious decouplings from the Evil Google Empire: DuckDuck Go as a search engine instead of the awful Google Search, and now Firefox for Chrome. Annoyingly, I can’t really do without Google Maps, because those fuckers have sunk their fangs deeply into almost all shopping sites, and anyway, Uber seems to require Google for their vehicle tracking — assuming, that is, that I can ever get back to driving for Uber.
One day soon I’ll go back to using a paper journal / diary instead of the foul Google Calendar. Back when I was a Great Big Executive (in the Pre-Personal Computer Era), I used a tiny calendar to manage my entire life, and somehow I got by even though my daily life was littered with office appointments, birthdays, weekend plans, band practices / performances. The best part of this practice, in retrospect, came from knowing that the details of my personal life were absolutely confidential and impervious to snooping from commercial interests, Chinese and Russian hackers, and bored, basement-dwelling neckbeards (who snoop just because they can). I could also open up my diary without having adverts screaming at me and / or redirecting my attention (and often, dollars) to malevolent data strip-miners.
I long ago quit using any of the over-complicated MS Office products, of course, as the (free) Open Office suite gives me everything I need to run my life from a writing, mathematical and accounting perspective.
Oh, and one last thing: if you feel the need to comment on this post, please refrain from making any sentences which include the word “Linux” because they will be deleted. Just as I refuse to grow my own wheat to make bread, I refuse to use an operating system that requires knowledge of concepts like “kernels”; and similarly, word processing is streets better than poring over type trays and composing sticks while having to think about kerning (no relation).
At some point, a complicated life gets simplified by invention and ingenuity, and then the invention and ingenuity start to take over whereupon life becomes complicated, once again. All I’m trying to do is pull back a little, to simplify my life a tad and slow things down so I can get halfway through the day without going “WTF?” and tossing shit into the swimming pool.
And did I mention that all the area shooting ranges — my favorite panacea for dealing with irritability, confusion and rage — are still closed?
Longtime Readers know that I detest the way tech companies strip-mine our personal information so they can sell it off to various other companies. Here’s one take on it:
Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a frightening story about a small company named Clearview AI that can identify the person in a picture someone uploads to its service. The New York Times said Clearview AI has more than 3 billion images “scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites” and that more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using it.
The report raises some really valid concerns about our privacy: If a picture of you exists somewhere online, and you participate in a protest or a rally, then it’s plausible law enforcement could upload a picture of you at the rally, run it through the Clearview system and easily find out who you are.
But fear not:
Facebook has a setting that can recognize your face so that you’re automatically suggested as a tag in pictures and video that your friends upload. (It won’t work if a stranger uploads your picture.) It’s not available for everyone, including people under 18. Facebook has been rolling it out in stages, and says it’s turned off by default, but I’ve had it for a while and have no recollection of how or when I turned it on.
- Open Facebook.com in your web browser.
- Tap the down arrow on the top right of the page.
- Choose Settings.
- Pick Face Recognition from the left side. If you don’t see it, your account might not have the feature.
- Next to “Do you want Facebook to be able to recognize you in photos and videos?” select No.
When you do that, Facebook says it will “delete your face recognition template” so you’re no longer recognized.
And if you honestly believe that your “face recognition template” has now actually been deleted, I have some snake oil to sell you, guaranteed to make you live forever, you witless simpleton.
I don’t trust any of these fucking bastards.