Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, AMD, etc. all inking new partnerships to generate a headline and valuation increase. Meanwhile AI companies PE ratios creep upward.

The top few companies can only helicopter cash at eachother for so long before the bubble eventually busts. That’s not new income being generated, it’s more akin to check-kiting in a public trading context.

On the technological side of things, you’re pretty much fucked no matter what. Virtually all car companies now have proprietary app integrations, partnerships with Google and Apple, and other anti-privacy features.

Some practical things you can do-

Opt out of as much data collection and sharing as you can. Read the manual and menu dive to disable optional features you don’t need.

If you finance or lease from the dealer, there are likely additional data disclosures and third party sharing that you can opt out of. Read all the paperwork when you sign your purchase or lease documents. In my case I had to literally fill out and mail something in (they don’t want it to be easy to opt-out because they make money from sharing the data with third parties).

I have some aging hardware (approaching 10 year old desktop PC) and I switched to Linux. I have to still use Windows at work but none of my personal computers are Windows anymore.

Microsoft can go kick rocks.

I mean, the bug and the feature of an Apple Airtag is the ubiquity of their devices and their ability to backchannel BLE over cellular networks using millions of end user devices with their pseudoconsent.

Just by the nature of how that expansive network functions, there is no similar alternative that you can control the privacy of.

The alternative would be a GPS transponder intended for vehicles, such as LoJack, or something similar. They are going to have power and subscription requirements, usually cost $1000 for the hardware etc. And in that scenario you still have to “trust” the vendor to a degree.

Sure, but in my view a bunch of dudes standing around with rifles is enough of a visual deterrent that it should never escalate to the point of “active robbery”.

What’s really odd is that France already pays Gendarmerie to stand around in public places, protect cultural assets etc.

If even one dude was standing in the corner of the gallery with a rifle slung up that day, that would likely have deterred the entire theft.

Finally it will be easier to search my vast catalog of memes.

I like the idea, but don’t just buy these assuming you’re good to go, and then walk around with a normie iPhone or Android device that phones home constantly with your precise location and device ID, SIM information etc.

There is always at least some error rate and deniability in probabilistic matching by something like facial recognition. There is a lot less deniability of your specific device ID, tied to your real identity (thanks to KYC laws), being in X location at Y time.

I would say this and also if you live in almost any medium sized place in the US, also try the local community college. You may have to bid on bulk lots but they sometimes sell individual PC hardware too. You may have to show up on a certain day that is usually advertised months in advance, online or on physical signage on campus. You might as well participate, since your county and local taxes likely subsidize the institution to begin with.

“Blood on cs_siege” is still out there on YouTube to document the dangers of drunk APC driving.

CS 1.6 with War3 mod was peak. Classes, Skill Trees, leveling up based on kills and rounds won.

Reviving teammates, insanely OP grenades, partial invisibility, and other ridiculous abilities.

I didn’t “have to” but, a few reasons…

1. Swapping the drive created a pretty easy rollback path that was just “put original drive back”

2. The drive was ~10 years old, and was in the range of recommended replacement for an SSD with the amount of TBW and age it had.

3. Original drive was kinda small and a new larger drive was available for not very much money.

Microsoft literally wanted me to convert my desktop to e-waste as it lacks the magical TPM chip that Win11 demands.

I said “fuck that” and pulled the Boot SSD, kept the existing non-boot drives for data, and put in a brand new SSD, encrypted it and installed Pop OS in one shot.

Not only was it easy, I lost literally zero critical functionality vs. what I had with Win 10. There is a Linux app equivalent for everything I had before. I had a few driver issues but most were auto-discovered including obscure ancient printers and scanners on my network.

Those who run immich, how have you been backing up your library?

My deployment isn’t anything fancy, it is currently a Raspberry Pi 4 with a 2TB external drive for the photo library. Been running for more than 6 months with minimal issues. Now that we are at a stable release I need to get some kinda backup going for the photos themselves.

If I had to come up with a steelman argument for small “AI focused” systems like this, I’d say that the more development in this space, makes the cost of entry cheaper, and actually eventually starves out the big tech garbage like OpenAI/Google/Microsoft.

If everyone who wants to use AI can locally process queries to a locally hosted open-source model with “good enough” results, that cuts out the big tech douchebags, or at least gives an option to not participate in their data collection panopticon ecosystem.

Let’s hope so. This should be my last Pixel if it all plays out like that.

And they wonder why some of us are still using local installed and firewalled Office 2007.

Tostitos 'bout to enter the silicon production sector y’all

Almost more concerning is the way big tech has consolidated on standards that hurt anonymity, even though they aren’t legally required to.

For example, have you tried to make a burner email account lately so you can register at some stupid app or site that you only intend to use once? It is surprisingly difficult now because all the “legit” email providers are moving towards requiring phone-based (mobile SMS) 2FA which inherently deanonymizes you in the US due to KYC laws.

Also the throwaway email sites like GuerillaMail are being blocked more often by various sites. Their domains are now frequently blacklisted so you can’t use a burner account as easily to register anonymous social media or other website accounts.

The secret of the CS and IT job is that it has always been the Neuveaux Blue Collar job.

For every IT exec and formerly-technical middle-management douchebag making really good money, there are 2 to 10 actually technical resources making “okay” money relative to their skill and the insane hours and scenarios they are expected to work.

Oh and let’s not forget they’re constantly trying to outsource as much of that support and engineering talent as possible.