Notices by Eric Brombaugh (emeb@society.oftrolls.com)

@ZenHeathen @TerryHancock @moira @blogdiva Just never let it connect to your network:
* Don't give it your WiFi SSID/PW
* Don't hook it to ethernet
* Don't talk to it with Bluetooth

If it insists on trying to find open networks in your area (there are reports that some do this) then open it up and remove the WiFi antenna.

It's possible to buy commercial monitors - large screens such as are used in stores & venues that don't have all this spy-fi, but they're much more expensive.

Must be July 4th in Phoenix

@raven667 @Bette @ben I heard that story too. Apparently it's just a false rumor that the businesses are writing off your donations. Snopes has more detail: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/walmart-checkout-charity/

@futurebird Insect brains seem like a very obvious place to start when studying intelligence - the fact that a few hundred thousand neurons can manifest such a widely varied responsiveness to their environment could tell us a lot about how to build machines that work effectively.

@dalias Yep - I got that too. Guessing that ever since Mint was acquired by T Mobile we'll be seeing a gradual decline in adherence to the orginal values that set them apart.

@dalias We saw something similar with Page Plus who's a Verizon MVNO - started with them about 20 yrs ago with a $10/4mo plan and a used flip-phone. Verizon bought them out a few years and the customer service immediately went down the toilet to the point that even the website for adding minutes was almost nonfunctional. Word was that Verizon was getting ready to shut them down but then recently the site was repaired and things have picked up. I guess someone chickened out.

Fujio Akatsuka and cat
#catsandartists
#caturday

I've always thought that recumbent cycles looked interesting and were probably a good idea. Today I saw someone who'd had a flat on one trying to push it down the sidewalk and it was one of the most unergonomic things I've seen - he had to bend over to reach down and steer it while keeping his feet away from the front wheel. By comparison a normal bicycle is fairly easy to push and steer with a flat. How a machine works in failure is something that seems to often be poorly considered.

Don't get me wrong - I like KiCad and use it often, but why, Why, WHY is that whenever you merely open a project to look at it, KiCad alters the files even though you haven't changed the design? This causes all kinds of hassle with my revision control - "Oh look - you changed the .kicad_pro, .kicad_prl, etc files - better check in those changes!"

@apodoxus @MLE_online People who consume fiction generally are aware that it's fiction. Too many people using LLMs treat the output as truth, and the OP image conveys that quite effectively.

Lotte Laserstein and cat
#catsandartists
#caturday

@MLE_online Reminds me of this: https://falseknees.com/comics/441.html

Yasuhiro Ishimoto and cat
#catsandartists
#caturday

I was going to write a long thread about the travails of having a landline repaired by Centurylink, but it seemed too long and whiny. Suffice to say that 8 days after setting up a service call it still isn't fixed and the techs just keep tossing the monkey around. I suspect that Centurylink really wants out of this business and is trying to discourage customers from continuing. It'll be interesting to see how this eventually resolves.

@brouhaha Sounds like what we need is a git repo of the firefox profile that gets committed once a day. Then you could git bisect to figure out where the malware got in and exactly what it was.