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Showing posts from May, 2024

Windows Recall - privacy nightmare?

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/05/25/microsoft_build_kettle/ This just seems crazy to me and a move designed to motivate corporate IT to prefer windows over Linux for the end user desktop so they can more easily prove people were doing the things they aren't supposed to be doing at work.  The problem with this is that it's a security nightmare. In addition to the obvious problems listed in the article, it's also a social engineering tool of epic proportions.  An intruder, viewing the Recall info in real time real time, has a massive leg up on the user in the most common form of scam: the calls pretending to be from "tech support" from your ISP offering to fix your computer. Does this seem far fetched? Combine robocalls, an AI LLM geared toward voice chat and motivated to get you to install a "tech support" program, and then a hand-off to a skilled con artist to complete the scam and you have a recipe for disaster affecting our m

Creating versus consuming

 Lately, I have really been limiting my viewing of media after a certain point each night, including reading, and especially consuming content on screens. I am still doing OK with audio content but more fiction and trying to go to music more often, but I do love a good audio book.   Why? I have a sleep disorder and my tracking of sleep quality indicates that nights when I play video games or watch shows before I go to sleep are nights I sleep poorly. There are other factors I also manage but they are not relevant to this post.   So now, starting an hour before bed, I try to make rather than consume. The form this is currently taking is building out an analog Zettelkasten (ZK). Sounds so pretentious, I know. But all it is, is tree of info organized as you file into it, using index cards.  So my routine is something like this: Begin relaxing by productive puttering - lights are turned off, dried pots and pans from dinner are put away, coffee is put on for the next morning (on a timer, I

3D printing has entered the chat

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I have been using index cards a lot lately for note taking and other things so I picked up a 3D printed desk storage tray which also has a nice pen cradle. It's the first thing I own that I know was produced to this way.  This is an interesting development in my own personal journey but also in the progress of our technical capabilities. One of the aspects of technology I find most interesting is the progression of tech from theoretical to corporate to being used by average people in the home.  Computers made this progression very slowly. It took years and years. 3D printing saw this happen more rapidly. The casual use of nuclear power depicted by sci fi authors like Heinlein hasn't quite happened yet and probably never will but I do think CRISPR might be usable in the home. Maybe not in my lifetime but you never know. I'm imagining a biological 3D printer making a bespoke medical cocktail, for example.  Crazy? As crazy as me walking around with a computer in my