So does mine but I actually like it. Not for the reason it was put on there, god no, but I can use it in my Home Assistant automations. Now whenever I brush my teeth my bathroom speaker starts playing the daily news highlights.

You could use it for other things too, like a reminder if you forgot to brush, could be good for kids. But the default functionality is complete garbage. Why they thought you’d want an app to time brushing your teeth when the vibrate function does the same thing is beyond me. I just got them because they were a good deal at Costco and I didnt pay extra for the bluetooth.

Yup. I did this with my Vizio TV and it worked great for a while. Then the TV started rebooting mutiple times a day. If i disconnect it from the WiFi or let it have full internet access the problem stops. It seems that their “Smartcast” app will crash and force a reboot if it can’t phone home when it wants.

I paid good money for this TV back when Vizio wss considered a good brand and I hate to retire it just for this, so I’ve given up my nice Home Assistant integrations and it’s just a disconnected dumb TV now. You can’t downgeade the firmware either so they’ve essentially killed the smart features for me. Should be illegal.

Or more likely it’ll just use DoH or DoT. DNS blocking is still effective but it’s becoming less so as these companies wise up.

Yup, this can get used for very scary stuff. As you said it’s low bandwidth, but since edge devices are more powerful that’s less of a limitation than you might think. A TV could easily do speech to text, rough ACR, and device fingerprinting all locally without any internet connection, then summarize and compress that data for a daily or weekly upload. No need to send the large data itself, just a a small report that’s a few KB in size.

Read up on Amazon Sidewalk. I’m not saying your TV is using it, but with 5G and mesh networking companies are finding ways to get data back to them without relying on you.

What? Even if you’re right that CSAM was included in training data (and that’s highly debated), it would absolutely have been inadvertent and due to the Internet dragnet style of training. I don’t know where you get the idea that AI companies would ask for more CSAM and drive up demand to “improve” their model.

What do you find bad about the 9? I bought a used 8 to try GrapheneOS on, but the HW isn’t as good as my S23. I was thinking of maybe going to a 9 or 10 if I could make GOS my daily, not just for the better cameras and ultrasonic FP reader, but the desktop mode on the 8 is god awful. The output is so heavily compressed and only does 1080p, DeX just crushes it.

I haven’t read the books, but have heard recommendations for the show. I tried to watch it, but had to turn it off after the first three episodes. The visuals were great, but I found the writing and dialogue to be really bad. So many heavy handed references to that girl being smart. Counting prime numbers for fun while swimming or something up to an impossible number, etc. There were other things but that’s what I remember for some reason.

Usually when I notice something like that it persists, so I stopped watching. Did the dialogue bother you and did it get better, or is this just a subjective a taste thing?

I do agree with you on this, to an extent. I was very annoyed when D Smith flew down to Florida to usurp our bargaining power. However I do think the political environment has changed since then, and this isn’t anywhere near as bad.

It’s more like “Maybe I shouldn’t put a bunch of work into this sign, and reconsider attending the parade since the forcast is rain”.

Same. My small town high school wasn’t even in a farming community, but no one said anything to the leatherman wave I had on my belt.

I’m sure if In was showing it off or brandishing it around I would have gotten told to leave it at home, but I was responsible so it was never an issue. Got bullied, never once considered reaching for it as a weapon.

We have a societal failing right now where people for some reason think violence is OK. A knife, a gun, a car, or a hammer can do incredible damage and people should treat them all with the respect they deserve. If citizens start thinking about “arming themselves”, even when they have easy access to such tools, we’ve already fucked up.

So you recognise that the US is unlikely to honor a deal, yet in the same breath ask not complicate negotiating the deal?

If the deal is a sham, why put any stock in it? Standing up for ourselves will only put us in a stronger postion down the road if the US ever becomes rational again. We’ll be just sitting there on the next administrations doorstep, with easy economic opportunity a signature away (and a list of demands).

Making a deal now is a fools errand. All Carney has to do is stem the bleeding to keep us afloat until then.

You’re bang on that religion encompasses more than just faith. They’ve been around so long that those institutions carry within it culture, community, art, etc.

Since you’re on the fediverse I’ll use the analogy of Reddit. It had incredible communities, talented people, and wealth of knowledge, but it wasn’t on the right course so we left. Now we have to build all that up again. None of those things were intrinsic to Reddit, they were just collected under it’s roof.

So back to religion, recognise that generations of people of all talents lived under it’s roof and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to enjoy it’s art and philosophical teachings (when applicable). We live in a go-go-go world right now that doesn’t give people the time for reflection and introspective thinking, and religions often did. What you shouldn’t do, however, is assume that gods have any relevance today. They are nothing but superstitions used to explain a confusing world, and then harnessed to control populations. Religion itself deserves no respect.

Exactly. One caller during a CBC phone in show was saying how he thought it was good for Canada to get into AI and build our skills so we’re more competitive.

I was like… dude… this is Meta’s data centre, the only Canadians employed will be a handfull of DC techs and maintenance staff. ALL the real work is being done remotely. These are literally here just to burn fossel fules at an incredible rate. Thats it.

“If we don’t build it someone else will” Great, let them then. The only people who benifit here are the construction and gas companies, then the environment suffers for however long they run. If someone wants to build and environmentally sustainable DC then cool, I’m all ears, but that’s never what’s being proposed. We’re in hyperscale mode here, the only thing that matters is speed and dropping a box down ontop of a natural gas reserve is as fast as it gets.

I loved the “idea” of the Chromecast and used them exclusively for over 5 years. However the implementation was always the issue. Phones would always disconnect leading to the inability to control it, and after recent updates, kill the stream mod session.

A hybrid approach is the best IMO. A remote for ease of access and quick things, plus casting for when you alreay have your phone out and want to use the better interface.

I unfortunately can’t remember the video and I stopped watching after. The opening scene was him going on and on about maps and unfurling big maps dramatically for the camera. He got a bunch of facts wrong, people caller him out on it, he did sort of a non apology thing and then kept on being doing his thing. He’s basically a videographer who does “reporting” to fill his videos.

All MHBHD brought to the table early on was YT polish, back when tech channels were about the tech. He gave surface level reviews for a “The Verge” style audience. I think you could always do better than him or LTT, regardless of any controversies.

Yes, that’s mostly true. It was before I was born, but it seems like Canada had it’s own identity forged after the fighting of WWII, but that has been eroding ever since. Good ideas like CanCon tried to maintain this, but it seems largely futile against the behemoth that is the US media/economy.

We’re now in this delayed lock step with the US, but I don’t see why that trend has to continue. There were of course people opposed to free trade, offshoring and neoliberalism when the US took that path, but those took decades to show their full effect. The US healthcare and political system, however, are currently recognised as dysfunctional, yet we’re trying to adopt them? Why?

We now have access to more data than ever before, instantly at our fingertips that shows these are bad paths to go down, but people are overloaded and don’t seem to want to think long term anymore. We got a lot of traction with elbows up, and we need to find a way to keep that Canadian identity alive, otherwise everything that differentiates is from the US will continue to erode.

Yeah, I would agree that the overton window has shifted and the centre in Canada today would be considered the conservatives of the past.

I also agree that many of the policies Carney’s implementing could have been put forth under a PP lead Conservative Party, but I think the damage would have been worse. As many others have pointed out, Canada takes cues from US politics and Trump style “leadership” is horribly toxic to our democracy. We have to fight to push away the idea that PP is even a viable candidate, because as soon as we do, if he wins, then that Pandora’s box will have been opened.

Right now I feel as if we’re peeking inside it. Ford and Smith are both populist weasels and are showing that diluted Trumpian playbooks can be successful here. I fear it’s only a matter of time before we fling it open and then there’s no going back. Right now we have the choice between the lesser of two conservative governments. Let Trump politics take hold and we’ll be choosing between a stable conservative government and a wrecking ball, and then we can kiss any chance of leftist politics goodbye as people scramble to just maintain order.

Liberal doesn’t mean jack anymore. He’s a centrist banker, always was. He’s leagues better than PP, but he’s no friend of the left.

I really hope the NDP can get their shit together. Canada is looking like US politics v0.5 right now.