A tweet by Wetterschneider advises professionals, particularly those under NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) or dealing with proprietary files, to cancel Adobe services and delete its applications.
The tweet claims that Adobe cannot be trusted, though it does not provide specific reasons or evidence for this assertion.
Forum users criticize Adobe's cancellation fees and extensive data access under new Terms of Service, sharing tactics to avoid fees and expressing privacy concerns.
Comparisons to Google and Microsoft highlight a trend of vague and overreaching policies, with discussions on alternatives like GIMP, Krita, and Affinity, despite challenges in switching due to Adobe's dominance.
Legal implications of Adobe's terms, including potential conflicts with client agreements and enforceability of contract clauses, are debated, emphasizing the ethical issues and the need for better open-source solutions.
The discussion focuses on macOS menu bar management tools, including Bartender, Ice, Dozer, and Hidden Bar, and user experiences with these applications.
Concerns are raised about Bartender's recent acquisition by a less trusted company, leading to potential privacy and transparency issues.
Users compare macOS's usability and window management with other operating systems like Windows and Linux, debating the need for third-party tools to enhance productivity and the consistency of macOS's user interface.
Microsoft has changed its Recall feature, which records user activity for AI analysis, to an opt-in setting after backlash over security concerns.
Critics had labeled Recall as potential spyware, citing risks of unauthorized access to sensitive data; now, user authentication via PIN or biometrics is required to enable or access Recall data, which will remain encrypted.
Despite these changes, privacy risks remain, especially in legal contexts, and this move follows a series of security incidents at Microsoft, with CEO Satya Nadella emphasizing security as a top priority.
Microsoft is disabling its Recall feature by default due to significant privacy and security concerns raised by users.
Critics argue that Recall captures sensitive information, such as emails and passwords, likening it to invasive browser history tracking, reflecting broader issues of diminishing privacy awareness.
The discussion highlights the need for high privacy standards and responsible data handling by companies, with users expressing distrust towards tech companies' data practices and considering alternatives like Linux due to privacy issues.
The article "A Picture is Worth 170 Tokens: How Does GPT-4o Encode Images?" by Oran Looney explores why GPT-4o charges 170 tokens to process each 512x512 image tile, equating this to about 227 words.
It contrasts GPT-4o's advanced image encoding strategy with CLIP's simpler method and highlights the effectiveness of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for image data.
The text discusses GPT-4o's performance on grid-based image analysis, proposes a pyramid strategy for improvement, and speculates on its OCR capabilities, suggesting it might use an external engine like Tesseract.
The discussion emphasizes the need for a modern, open-source OCR (Optical Character Recognition) solution, suggesting alternatives like PaddleOCR for better speed and accuracy compared to outdated tools like Tesseract.
It critiques the inefficiency and high costs of using large language models (LLMs) for OCR tasks and mentions Apple's OCR API as a non-open-source option, highlighting user experiences with various OCR tools and issues with documentation and cloud service costs.
The conversation also delves into advanced topics like image tokenization with models like VQVAE, computational complexity of image embeddings, and future trends in AI, with debates on GPT-4's image processing capabilities and the need for improved OCR accuracy for complex text.
The paper "σ-GPTs: A New Approach to Autoregressive Models" introduces a novel method that challenges the traditional fixed left-to-right order in autoregressive models like GPT.
By using positional encoding for outputs, the model can dynamically adjust the generation order per sample, allowing for sampling and conditioning on arbitrary token subsets.
This approach enables efficient multi-token sampling with a rejection strategy, significantly reducing the number of model evaluations and generation steps across various domains.
The paper "Σ-GPTs: A New Approach to Autoregressive Models" presents a novel training method for GPT models involving random permutation of input tokens and dual positional encodings.
This method enables parallel prediction of missing tokens, simultaneous computation of conditional probabilities, and uses a rejection-sampling method for generating in-fill tokens, potentially improving efficiency and capabilities.
While similar to models like XLNet, Σ-GPTs introduce unique elements such as double positional encoding and burst-sampling, with discussions on applications and limitations, including sentence coherence and hallucination issues.
An online community forum discusses hardware and software topics, including product support for various devices like notebooks and printers.
A recent BIOS update has rendered HP ProBook 445 and 455 G7 laptops inoperable, causing user frustration due to HP's lack of response and concerns over repair costs for out-of-warranty devices.
Users share solutions such as flashing the BIOS chip, contacting HP for repairs, and advise disabling future BIOS updates to prevent similar issues.
HP is criticized for bricking laptops with faulty BIOS updates, reflecting ongoing quality issues and poor customer service.
Users discussed the risks of BIOS updates, the absence of dual BIOS systems, and potential legal implications under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
Comparisons were made with brands like Apple and Framework, which are praised for reliability, while HP's quality is seen as declining, especially post-Carly Fiorina's leadership.
On June 6, 2024, Damien Miller introduced two new configuration options for OpenBSD's sshd(8): PerSourcePenalties and PerSourcePenaltyExemptList.
These options aim to penalize undesirable client behaviors, such as repeated failed authentication attempts or actions causing sshd crashes, by temporarily blocking offending IP addresses.
PerSourcePenalties will be enabled by default in the upcoming OpenBSD 7.6 release, and administrators are advised to configure these settings carefully to avoid blocking legitimate traffic, especially when handling connections from behind NATs or proxies.
The debate focuses on new OpenSSH options designed to penalize undesirable behavior, with concerns about their fairness and effectiveness, especially with IPv6.
There is a consensus that SSH keys are more secure and convenient than passwords, with discussions on SSH certificates, key management, and alternatives like PKCS#11 and VPNs for enhanced security.
The conversation also touches on OpenBSD's philosophy of minimizing code complexity for security, contrasting with OpenSSH's configurability, and the potential impact of removing password authentication.
CPU Energy Meter is a Linux tool designed to monitor Intel CPU power consumption using the RAPL feature, available from the Sandy Bridge generation onwards.
Developed by LMU Munich, it tracks power usage across various domains (CPU package, core, uncore, memory, and platform) with negligible overhead and is licensed under BSD-3-Clause.
Installation is simple via a PPA for Debian/Ubuntu or from a .deb package on GitHub, and it can run without root access by setting appropriate permissions.
The discussion highlights tools and methods for measuring energy consumption of Intel and AMD CPUs, including "CPU Energy Meter," Intel's RAPL interface, perf, turbostat, and AMD's uProf.
AMD's energy measurement feature was removed from the Linux Kernel (version 5.13) due to security concerns, with alternatives like Astron's Power Measurement Toolkit recommended.
The conversation also addresses the accuracy of Intel's energy measurements, challenges in whole-system power measurement, and issues with CPU throttling due to the PROCHOT condition, offering mitigation suggestions.
Marc Brooker, an AWS engineer, discusses the complexities of multi-threaded programming in a blog post, using a birthday paradox simulation as a case study.
He found that multi-threading made the simulation slower due to context switches and L1 cache misses, identified using Linux's perf tool.
Switching to a reentrant random number generator (random_r) improved performance, illustrating that multi-threaded programs can sometimes be less efficient than single-threaded ones.
The discussion highlights the inefficiencies and complexities of using threads in programming, especially with global shared states like random(), and the limitations of standard libraries like libc in multi-threaded environments.
Participants suggest custom libc replacements, better abstractions to manage side effects, and explore the benefits and challenges of functional programming and OS-level security measures.
Emphasis is placed on the importance of deterministic behavior in multi-threaded random number generators (RNGs), the use of thread-local states, and the debate over global versus independent pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs).
Tom7 is a well-regarded content creator known for his intricate and educational videos, often likened to academic dissertations.
Fans appreciate his creativity and depth, with notable projects like the NES playing SNES games being highlighted.
His whimsical approach, including intentional errors to engage viewers, often leads to profound and humorous insights, earning him a dedicated following.
Users can continue using adblockers on Chrome and Chromium by enabling the ExtensionManifestV2Availability key, despite Google's shift to Manifest V3, which lacks the webRequestBlocking API.
Instructions for enabling this key vary by operating system: Linux and ChromeOS require terminal commands, Windows uses regedit, and MacOS involves a terminal command (untested).
This workaround utilizes enterprise policies to maintain the functionality of adblockers even after official support for Manifest V2 extensions ends.
A GitHub post addresses maintaining adblocker functionality on Chrome and Chromium despite Google's shift to Manifest V3, which limits adblockers, suggesting temporary solutions for developers and tech-savvy users.
Users debate switching to Firefox, which still supports adblockers, despite distrust due to past changes, and discuss alternatives like Edge, Safari, Pi-hole, and DNS-level blocking.
Concerns are raised about the sustainability of workarounds, the dominance of Chromium-based browsers, and the impact of Google's changes on ad blockers, with mentions of support from browsers like Brave and Arc.
Boeing's Starliner capsule successfully launched, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to low Earth orbit, after multiple failed attempts.
The mission, part of NASA’s $4.3 billion Commercial Crew Program, aims to test Starliner's capability to transport crews to the International Space Station (ISS).
Despite technical issues with its thrusters, the capsule docked with the ISS, and the astronauts will provide a live virtual tour of the Starliner on June 8.
Boeing's Starliner successfully docked at the ISS despite experiencing multiple thruster failures, continuing a trend of similar issues from past missions.
Post-docking, engineers discovered a fourth helium leak and unresolved thruster problems, raising concerns about the spacecraft's reliability for future manned missions.
The discussion highlights a comparison between Boeing's traditional approach and SpaceX's iterative, risk-tolerant strategy, noting criticisms of Boeing's quality decline and the impact of funding cuts on spaceflight knowledge and mission safety.
A GitHub user, blixt, showcased a project using a 7-color e-paper display for weather updates, utilizing AI to convert location names into coordinates and generate weather images.
The discussion included the use of various devices like the Inkplate 6Color and Raspberry Pi for driving e-paper displays, emphasizing power efficiency and ease of use with interfaces like SPI and GPIO.
Participants debated the necessity and effectiveness of AI in disambiguating location names and generating weather visuals, considering the availability of free weather APIs and the practical application of such technology.
The document outlines the author's process for reprogramming the BIOS memory chip in an HP Envy 17-ae110nr laptop after a failed BIOS update rendered it non-functional.
The author used tools such as schematics, an STM32 development board, and SPI communication to extract and reflash the BIOS firmware, ultimately restoring the laptop after several attempts.
The document serves as a guide for others facing similar issues and highlights concerns about HP's customer service, especially regarding warranty voids due to third-party components.
A GitHub user shared their experience recovering a bricked HP laptop, sparking discussions on warranty fraud, HP's product reputation, and BIOS recovery techniques using tools like Bus Pirate and Raspberry Pi.
The conversation highlighted challenges in modern hardware repair, with users sharing similar issues across various brands and frustrations with warranty services, particularly Sony's.
Technical insights on firmware updates, custom hardware solutions, and legal aspects of warranties were discussed, with mixed opinions on HP's reliability and support, emphasizing the importance of data backups and considering computers as replaceable.