In response to Google's announced plans to restrict sideloading, I'm seeing people saying "well couldn't you root the phone and do this or that?"

C'mon people, think of someone other than yourself about this. Not only will rooting likely become more difficult over time, 99.999% of users will never root their phones. THEY are the ones who will be most at risk from Google's new fascism-friendly policy.

L

The Mozilla Firefox configuration settings are utterly polluted with AI crap, with no simple way to turn them all off easily. However, there are three that seem to kill most of the AI activity at the UI level, but what's going on in the background I of course can't see. By the way, Firefox is also hiding http: and https:, a terrible decision that Google tried and reversed years ago. You can disable this in Firefox about:config as well. To cripple Firefox AI:

Go to URL about:config

Set these to "false":

browser.ml.chat.enabled

extensions.ml.enabled

These stop Firefox from attempting to create link preview "key points" AI garbage from reading your page. Also:

Setting to false:

browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled

Will turn off the annoying link preview behavior entirely.

I will note that this behavior by Mozilla is actually far more invasive than what Chrome currently does.

Hey Mozilla: Take your damned AI and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

L

How a disgusting creature like Trump's Stephen Miller ever graduated from Santa Monica High is a puzzlement.

Basically, the headline is this:

"Pope dies after visit by J.D. Vance."

nostr:npub17nvc70k9ezl2w57tm7qjw0smlh00h6svds42r75wjt95p6mnu5dsh996rn The correct answer is: "It depends."

nostr:npub1hvdfn5ne7zvks3ztfewr00vdjv3kve4nddht43p8fjepc8rn6yasz69sq9 He was a liar. To both parties.

I imagine the State of Georgia would have been willing to provide free transportation for Rudy Giuliani -- in shackles.

Georgia indictments FULL TEXT: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23909552-trump-ga-indictment?responsive=1&title=1

Always gives one that warm, fuzzy feeling of confidence when the UI for the software you must use to upgrade a device's firmware is all in Chinese.

Study: ChatGPT's code answers have errors more than half the time, but convince users they're correct anyway - https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.02312

Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Models - https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15043

Zoom will now use your content for AI training -- without any opt-out - https://stackdiary.com/zoom-terms-now-allow-training-ai-on-user-content-with-no-opt-out/

Despite its faults, I do love #YouTube. I subscribe to YT Premium, and I consider it to be my most important streaming source, by far. I have almost 7,000 YT videos in my primary "generic" Favorites playlists (split across two lists, because I learned that -- at least at one point -- the maximum number of videos for a single playlist was 5000.

YT has a generic way to search the video play History (which in my case is truly enormous), but no native way I know of to search playlists.

I'm now using this Chrome extension for this purpose. It's pretty cool. Enjoy.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/playlist-search-for-youtu/jdolgjncmhmboklhmacpknglmiibbldg

Meanwhile, the Sheriff in Atlanta says that unless someone tells him specifically differently, if there is a Trump indictment there Trump will be processed in the normal manner, including a mugshot (note that the Trump campaign has actually been using FAKE mugshots in their materials so far!)

He didn't say anything about handcuffs or perp walks, at least not yet.

I honestly do have the feeling that if Trump keeps playing fast and loose with the Jan 6 judge's orders and rulings, she really would lock him up. This is the first time in the entire saga of everything Trump has done that I've actually felt this way.

One of the most difficult aspects of Software Defined Radios for most people to wrap their heads around is the concept of "IQ sampling". This permits, for example, the entire AM broadcast band to be received at once and saved in an ordinary file. Later, you can read back that file and freely tune the entire AM band from that file -- including every station within it --- just as if you were tuning and listening live. Some non-trivial math (including complex numbers) is involved in this process, and it's really quite fascinating.

nostr:npub1600zrr7ph220zy8a3shk0w4zyhudpw7a24f350zsggxhjvzmxdrsf23hjv There are international ones, there are domestic ones. The fact that they are of diverse origins doesn't mean there shouldn't be severe, life-changing consequences for anyone who attempts to extort medical facilities. And they'd find ways to get paid without cryptocurrencies, just as they did *before* cryptocurrencies.

The penalty for a cyberattack that causes death, injury, or delayed important medical treatments (e.g. cancer, etc.) at hospitals or other major medical facilities should be mandatory life in prison.

***** The Typewriter *****

Composer Leroy Anderson completed one of his most famous pieces -- "The Typewriter" -- in 1950, and it was first performed three years later to be recorded by the Boston Pops Orchestra for Decca Records.

Since then it has been performed uncountable times -- right through to the present -- often by famous orchestras, and frequently playing up the comedic nature of the physical "typewriter" typing that is integral to the piece.

In the 1963 film "Who's Minding the Store", Jerry Lewis mimes typing on an invisible "air typewriter" to the entire piece, and you can find many examples of individuals making videos of themselves recreating his performance.

But look closely. There's something of a problem, both in Lewis' original filmed performance and virtually all of the recreations of that performance.

At the end of each "typing line" the right hand is used to "push" the invisible typewriter carriage to the left to start the next line.

But ... this is backwards. Unless you're using a typewriter designed for, say, Hebrew or Arabic (unlikely in this case), the carriage must be pushed to the RIGHT by the LEFT hand to get back to the start of each line.

Lewis did it wrong, and pretty much everybody since then has duplicated his error.

Not the end of the world, but amusing. -L

Obnoxious "X" sign removed from roof of #Twitter in SF.