Tag: Technology

Opting Out

Bad News, Technology

According to this report, our household appliances are about to become snitches on just about every aspect of our lives:

One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you click between channels.
Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command.
With every additional smart device in your home, companies are able to gather more details about your daily life. Some of that can be used to help advertisers target you — more precisely than they could with just the smartphone you carry.

And the news just gets better and better:

Despite the fact that there’s plenty of information available showing how these devices collect data about every aspect of your life and the manufacturers both use and sell that data on the open market, the majority of people seem to either not care or are willing to accept this “new reality” as part of living in the modern world.

Once again [sigh], it appears that I’m in a minority.

No doubt, there will appear at your local drugstores condoms which measure the number of thrusts, such data sent back to the manufacturers of K-Y “Duration” gel, said antidote for premature ejaculation to arrive at your bedside by special delivery within two strokes of initial insertion.  And that’s a benevolent  outcome for such intrusiveness.

Never mind that.  Here’s a situation already in being:

T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.

I don’t often agree with church leaders about, well, anything much.  But I’m in absolute agreement with this man.

Allow me to offer a suggestion for a brand-new industry.  When a new generation of “smart” phones arrived on the market and appeared to be “locked” to a specific carrier, within days we saw phones being unlocked by street vendors, sometimes right outside  the stores selling the damn things.

I’m calling on all privacy-minded geeks of the world to unite, and to design apps or hacks or whatever to bypass the Big Brother mechanisms of these new infernal fink machines so that people (like me) who aren’t interested in letting Global MegaCorp Inc. snoop into the most intimate areas of our lives may avail themselves of their inventions.

I will be at the head of the fucking line to buy them.  I promise.

Vanishing Tech

Bad News, Technology

This barely qualifies as news, I suppose:

The beginning of the end for the DVD player: John Lewis will no longer sell the gadgets as they are replaced by streaming services (joining VHS, cassette tapes and floppy disks in the dustbin of defunct technology)

As the owner of dozens of DVDs, I guess I’ll have to buy a backup (or two) DVD players for the inevitable time when you can’t find the blessed things anymore.  As it happens, I have a multi-format Blu-Ray DVD player at the moment — multi-format because I have both PAL- and NTSC-format DVDs:  a heritage of buying DVDs in Europe and Britishland during my various travels Over There.  Of course, Philips no longer makes the model I own, so I’ll have to pay the “Sony premium” for my backup.

Gah.

Look, I understand the March Of Progress and all that, and I know that technology becomes outdated after a while.  I just wish that the “while” would last a little longer.

And no, I’m not going to “stream” movies — at least, not the movies that I love and want to watch over and over again — because as any fule kno, what the “Cloud” giveth, the Cloud can take away (often without warning) and I refuse to be held hostage by the fucking movie studios (e.g. the horrible Disney Corporation, or Netflix).  The ordinary movies (i.e. most of them) I can watch once and never watch again without regret;  but the gems?  oh no, I wantssss them all, my Precioussss, so that I can enjoy them anytime I want and not when Global Entertainment MegaCorp says I can (or can’t, a pox on them).

Ditto books, by the way.  I’ve talked before about why I can’t use Kindle (see below* for the Cliff Notes version), so forget e-books of any kind whatsoever.  And I have hundreds of audio CDs, ergo I have a couple of backup CD players for the time when the poxy recording industry [50,000-word rant deleted]  decides that CD ownership is a Bad Thing.

Possession isn’t just 9/10 of the law when it comes to my viewing, listening and reading pleasure:  it’s all of the law, and I intend to keep it that way.

*I’ve never bought into e-books.  I tried a Kindle, but it might as well been kindling for all the appeal it has to me.  Here’s the reason why: my eyesight is failing [Old Fart Problem #4], which means I have to increase the font size to see the words properly.  Problem:  I read at about 2,000 words per minute (always have), which means that I get a blister on my thumb from hitting the “Next Page” button on a Kindle, and anyone in the room with me will eventually complain about the noise of the constant rapid-fire clicking.

And that’s the other problem, right there:  I love the feel of a book in my hands.  I love the ability to flip backwards to re-read a passage that turned out to be important later on.  I love the fact that once I own a book, it can’t be taken away from me electronically by some algorithm which decides that I’ve had the content “long enough” (as though there’s an expiration date on ownership).

Another RFI

Advice

This time, it’s for a cordless screwdriver, of this ilk:

Confession:  for most of my life I’ve used a variable-speed electric drill to drive screws home, because my experiences with the battery-type were universally bad.  But my Bosch drills are too cumbersome, too powerful and too heavy for furniture assembly — they’re fine for construction, less so for cabinetmaking — and as I’m about to assemble some Ikea bookcases in the near future*, I need a decent cordless screwdriver.  As always, I want to buy quality — not professional, but close to it — because if the damn thing breaks in mid-task, I will not be responsible for the rage which ensues.  Ditto if the damn battery only works for ten minutes before expiring.

All recommendations will be gratefully received.

*Don’t chide me, I have very specific dimension needs, and the Swedish joint is the only place which has suitable bookcases — believe me, I’ve looked.

Printer Update

Advice

Unless anyone tells me a serious horror story, I think I’m going with this combo:

Simple, cheap, cheap-to-run, duplex and small footprint (remember, I’ll be in an apartment with limited counter space).  And I’m not into the Amazon replenishment thing, given that each toner cartridge will last me about a year, and by buying two, I’ll just buy a new one each time the first one runs out.

I’ll only be ordering it around the end of the month, so feel free to disapprove of / shoot down my choice.

And many thanks for all the advice.

Help Needed

Advice

I need to buy a vacuum cleaner but never having bought one before, I have no idea what type, model or brand to get, so all recommendations (based on experience only, please) would be welcome.

As for parameters:

  • Cost:  if your recommendation is expensive, I can deal with that as long as the thing is reliable. Spending extra money on something that lasts for ten years is not expensive, it’s a bargain. On the other hand, if they’re all fragile regardless of cost, then I’ll just go cheap and replace every year, if that’s your recommendation.
  • Capabilities:  Must be able to vacuum both wooden- and carpeted floors.
  • Dust storage:  Can be bags or washable cylinders, I don’t care (unless this is an important distinction, in which case please explain).
  • Weight:  irrelevant as there are no stairs involved.
  • Additional features:  if, say, a steam-cleaning capability is included, it cannot detract from the primary function, i.e. vacuum cleaning. Ditto a detachable hose cleaner; I’ve heard that while the flexibility is nice, the suction leaves a lot to be desired.

If y’all don’t know or have little expertise (like me), then ask yer wives and such.

Otherwise, I’ll just go with my gut instincts and get a broom, mop and a Shop-Vac.

…And So Much For All That

Gummint, Lies and Untruths, Technology

I remember people welcoming the advent of driverless cars with exclamations of: “I can take a nap!” or “I can catch up on my work!” or “I can play online games!” or “I can go out and get plastered and not worry about breathalyzers!”, all while being driven to the office / home / airport etc.

Sadly, as with so many things, it’s all bullshit because of Nanny Government:

Drivers of self-steering cars such as Teslas will be ordered not to take their hands off the wheel for more than a minute.
The new regulations from the UK government will target drivers who let go of the steering wheel thanks to lane steering, cruise control or emergency braking features.
Motorists who break the new rules will face points on their licence, a potential £1,000 fine and even prison.
It comes after legislation requiring cars manufacturers to install a feature to alert drivers when they have not touched the wheel for 15 seconds.

So the attraction of driverless cars is… what, exactly? Forgive me while I snort with derision.

Ahhhh, let’s forget about all that driverless crap and gaze upon a car which absolutely mandates self-driving, a 1957 Maserati 3500 GT:

None of that no-drive nonsense here: the 3500 line features a six-cylinder 3.5-liter engine driven with a four- or five-speed manual transmission, and it was in production for eight years (a long time for Maserati, in those days), attesting to its popularity. And if that pic wasn’t enough to persuade you, here’s the convertible version:

Those of you wanting one can form a line behind me.