LLMs are excellent tools for mapping one set of words and phrases to another, which is more or less exactly what you need out of a language translator.

The former I’m still looking sideways at.

The latter, probably the only truly benevolent use of LLMs. And even then, you’ll get plenty of grumbling.

🫣

It is entirely true that all models from all manufacturers are compromised by spy agencies.

I think there’s a little bit of space between “spy agencies employ systems professionals that know the guts of a component’s security and tricks to bypass it” and “every device firmware has a double super secret protocol for sidestepping all of its security features”.

However the worst offender by far is Cisco even though they’re “American”.

Sure. I’m willing to believe that Cisco, specifically, has relationships with the Five Eyes network such that they make monitoring their traffic easier. Even then, there’s limits. One thing to say techniques exist to bypass security. Another entirely to know what those techniques are and whether they’re practical for application at universal scale.

One of the more chronic problems that big spy agencies have is sifting through all the spam and bullshit and empty chatter. Decryption takes time. And you can’t monitor everything, everywhere, all at once. The bigger sins of Cisco are in how they expedite access on behalf of their agency partners, not that they fail to produce perfectly hack-proof hardware.

because why the fuck the not?

In theory, you would have better things to do with your real estate.

But I guess I’m the idiot who threw my kit out six months ago to make the house a little less cluttered.

Smuggling? Setting up a factory in Florida that reboxes routers and slaps “Made In America” stickers on them? Resale/referb router prices going through the roof?

Take your pick.

If you don’t visit YouTube…

Partner put this up

cringe

at a law firm

bent double with the overwhelming pain of cringe

where we meet high net worth

Oh no, that makes perfect sense. All those people are freaks who would love this.

Come over here and say that to my Arc of the Covenant

It’s nicer to live in the US than in a country the US has decided to re-colonize

Is this the one where Good and Evil American natives fight for a pair of golden plates you can only read from inside a hat?

No sane person is going to spend that massive amount of money

I do remember a friend who dropped $1200 on linked GeForce 1040s(?) to max out the settings in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

Was it worth it? Probably not. Will people with more money than sense do it? Absolutely.

And, to be fair, it is.

It’s not. The Resident Evil side-by-side is the clearest example.

You took what was supposed to be a grim, shadowy, grungy, dusty set piece and you made it brighter, cleaner, smoother, and happier. That subverts the whole mood of the game. Now imagine DLSS 5 doing this same kind of work on a shambling zombie or a Licker or William Birkin from RE2. You really want your super mutants and murder hobos to get this kind of glow-up?

This reminds me of an old mod that got rid of all the fog in Silent Hill. People posted it to joke about how it destroyed the entire vibe, making large parts of the setting trivially easy to solve.

They do that on cheap shit

Polo puts the polo brand on everything. Ralph Lauren, GAP, etc.

I’ve got a Ralph Lauren shirt from the 1990s that I still wear because its held up so well.

you won’t find the upper range in fashion-brands

Are you talking about bespoke tailoring? Even they get their fabric from Bangladesh.

“You’re about to get it so hard.”

“Wow, hot!”

“Not really. You just don’t qualify for three of these credits. That’s going to bring your liabilities up by about $12,000”

Five, swap seats with Silent Bob, throw on headphones, hope Beavis and Butthead don’t crash the plane

Five minutes into the flight, he’s going to have this really nervous, embraced look on his face. Ten minutes in, he’s going to be fidgeting and kinda trying to catch your attention. Fifteen minutes in, he’s going to give you the most exasperated sigh and announce “It’s lupus. You’ve got lupus. You need to begin treatment as soon as we land.”

You know that the REAL quality clothes don’t have labels?

Sticking a label on a piece of clothing doesn’t change it’s quality.

Also most fashion-brands are really shitty quality, made in Bangladesh

Textile mills in Bangladesh produce a wide range of qualities.

Obama is not a pedophile

He sent his kids to work at Miramax fully aware of Harvey Weinstein’s history. He spent more labor and resources conducting a Cold War across Latin America and the Middle East than cracking down on the crooks, the white nationalists, and the pedophiles at home.

Ffs, his chief economic advisor - Larry Summers - absolutely was a pedophile. As were his political allies in the tech sector, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

If he wasn’t personally schtupping kids, he was enabling and enriching those that did.

Trump, himself, was engaged in open and notorious human trafficking through Eastern Europe during Obama’s tenure. This whole thing could have been nipped in the bud if his FBI director James Comey cared half as much about Krasnov as Hillary’s emails.

And some manchildren have none of that.

Obama very wisely and maturely appointed Mueller’s protege James Comey to head the FBI. Comey very diligently and methodically played Ds and Rs against one another to secure his position as a radical centrist. And between the two of them, the conditions were laid for a Manchild to take control of the executive branch.

I just don’t get the need for hagiography. All these guys sucked. Some of them were just smoother about it than others.