Farcebook

Month: April 2024

  • Copilot – your unwanted everyday intrusion

    Copilot – your unwanted everyday intrusion

    After last night’s Windows update it appears I have something new to disable on my computer that was installed without my asking…

    I asked it how I could remove it, it gave me pointless generic information I could have found using Google.

    A bit more of a specific question made it get the point. It’s certainly not as “clever” as ChatGPT.

    Why do sites keep telling us to run gpedit.msc when it’s not a core part of Windows, and is only installed on the Pro versions?

    I seriously can’t wait for this current AI fad to go away, it reminds me of the voice assistant fad where everything needed a voice assistant until companies discovered nobody was using them.

  • Roku Express 4K

    Back in the mists of time I used to watch video on my TV using an XBox that I’d modded with a mod chip, running XBMC. It played videos off a Linux file server. While everyone else was playing DVDs on their telly, I was the oddball streaming video.

    Things have progressed, and after a few failed attempts at streaming my own video to various media PCs I finally discovered Jellyfin and the app for the Roku streaming media device. Also by this time I was watching quite a lot of YouTube and the Roku was a better way to watch YouTube instead of using a Chromecast. They worked fine, but needed a phone, and could only do YouTube.

    The Roku device I owned worked fine until a few years ago when it started buffering, stalling and just plain acting weird. I did a bit of investigation, found some oddities with my WiFi, fixed those but the Roku still wouldn’t play video properly and it was super irritating.

    I came to the conclusion video that we watched five years ago was probably at a lower bit rate than what we watch now. And either the 2.4ghz WiFi my Roku used couldn’t cope, or the device itself was a bit underpowered.

    Either way I finally gave in and bought the 4K version, and so far it seems to work great. No buffering, no weird black screens instead of video. I did have to force it to 1080p video only though, otherwise Netflix decided to try 4K and my TV doesn’t do 4K so all I saw was a black screen.

  • DofE 2024

    DofE 2024

    Where I probably walked more miles than the children, and everyone got very very muddy.

    Last weekend was the annual Duke of Edinburgh silver expedition, and once again I was herding children around the Yorkshire Dales. There wasn’t any snow this year, but it was raining and there was plenty of boot-sucking mud.

    Normally I spend the weekend bored, sat in a car watching kids roam the countryside using a Spot tracker in each groups’ bags.

    This year, they decided they wanted to go off-piste and discover the wilderness by themselves. And I got to do my steps stomping about trying to find them.

    Some of these miles were earned simply walking around the campsites, or trekking off from a convenient carpark to find a path junction where I’d planned to meet the kids. You can do a lot of steps if your toilet is a five minute walk away. It kind of shows how sitting still at your desk really isn’t a healthy lifestyle. You don’t need to stride off across the countryside to get some exercise, just put things out of arms reach so you have to get up and move a bit more.

    You also see some quite amusing things on your wanderings. I wonder what the story behind this road sign is…

    These lot probably know… They know everything. They’re probably reading this blog post right now.

  • Tech bubbles are so annoying

    To a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail. I remember when next door’s kid was learning to talk and form his own opinions, everything coming out of his mouth started with “daddy”.

    The tech world is just as bad. AI is the new hotness, we’re actively encouraged to use it at work, and it’s creeping into everything from summaries of Amazon reviews to spam comments on my blogs. Can we get over it, figure out it’s crap for writing thoughtful content, but very good for writing summaries of existing text and move on?

    I was looking for a plugin for WordPress and everything now seems to have AI shoved into it, even if it’s not a sensible idea.

    I’m not saying AI is bad, going to murder us in our sleep or turn into Skynet, but I wish the tech world would stop latching onto the new shiny thing and jamming it in every orifice regardless of whether it fits or not.