Farcebook

Category: Technology

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Machine Translation is better than Chinglish.

    Machine Translation is better than Chinglish.

    I don’t think Google is very good at translating Thai. I mean, it’s infinitely better than me at it, but even I can tell this is probably wrong…

    It had another go and was somewhat better.

    I’m fairly sure this isn’t some sort of game, but it containing berries is likely…

  • Hi, I’m a spammer, I notice you are avoiding my emails

    Hi, I’m a spammer, I notice you are avoiding my emails

    To be blunt, Claire I didn’t ask you to email me in the first place so I don’t quite understand the passive aggressive tone here.

    Also that amazing article you found was a two sentence Mastodon post about the battery level in my car. If that’s what you consider amazing… yeah maybe hire some decent writers.

    And if this is supposedly a personal email to entice me into doing something with you, why’s it got an unsubscribe link? 🤔