I actually do have WPE… it was in a bundle one time, so I got it for free. Tried it once, but I’m conceptually not a fan of running extra software on my gaming PC to run fancy wallpapers.

Supposedly it’s not TOO power hungry and can turn itself off when gaming. How’s your experience been with that?

I still have PTSD from the era of the ‘polyphonic ringtone’ hype. Those were the ‘fancier’ ringtones that weren’t just your usual beep or bell.

Usually you’d buy them by sending a text message to some expensive number and it would be sent to your phone. If you were dumb, you could get basically scammed into a ‘subscription’ so you’d get sent these expensive ringtones frequently. Many a teen got yelled at for that mistake in the late 90’s.

If you were a tech savvy lad, you could hook your phone up to your Windows PC and upload shitty ringtones yourself as well as wallpapers and such.

These days, who gives a shit? My iPhone ringtone is still the default ring. I honestly don’t care what it is, as it’s usually just annoying anyway.

Paying for ANY wallpaper is just silly, much less a subscription model.

The only time you should pay for one if it’s an artist you want to actively support and/or thank for that specific work.

Geez, you’d think Gemini would be better than it is if they spent that much on it…

This is definitely one of the most interesting attacks that’s ever happened. It certainly doesn’t look like an accident. If it was indeed Mossad: take a bow, you’ve earned it. That was a pretty slick move. That was probably a difficult op to pull off. Gotta respect the craft, even if you disagree on the method.

I did CPR training a while back, including AED use. It was fun - and sobering. The takeaway was basically: the odds of your victim surviving this is low, but any chance is better than no chance. They also drilled into us that good CPR will likely crack some ribs. Which is again preferable to, you know, being dead.

They also had us training on two mannequins. First one was the ‘nice’ dummy that’s easy to compress and teaches good form. Then they switched it out for a ‘lifelike’ dummy, which supposedly simulates the actual strength needed for good CPR. And man, that’s a workout for sure. After performing five minutes of solo CPR on that bad boy, I was about ready to need that AED myself. I’m quite a chunky individual, and even leveraging my body weight that took a bit of strength. We had a petite girl in our class who couldn’t manage it.

Well the new account was for the new streaming service which replaced the old one. And since that’s a different company… different TOS, obviously.

It was mildly annoying, but at least it means I can still use the radio I bought.

It’s really in the tech sector’s best interest to do that anyway. Because as a consumer, I’m now quite hesitant to buy a thing without knowing if it’s going to be properly supported.

We’ve all been burned before. My Sonos webradio lost functionality for a while after some backend streaming service was defunct. They did manage to fix that but it meant installing a new app, new account that sort of thing. It’s annoying- but at least the manufacturer did the right thing to keep it working. I can only imagine how frustrating it would’ve been if the entire thing stopped working with no support…

Basically, that experience is why I’m no longer willing to buy things that wholly depend on outside servers and the like to keep working. There’s too much risk of ending up with an expensive paperweight.

Exactly. I can’t control where other people find news, and if they choose poor sources, well, that’s on them. All I can do is be the best, most reliable source for them if they choose to read our news.

Our newspaper community is smaller than you might think. People frequently move around from company to company. I’ve worked in radio, TV news as well as newspapers for the past 20 years. I have a lot of former colleagues who work at other companies within our regional media. And us journalists are a gossipy bunch, as you can imagine. If someone actively tries to undermine my trust, they wouldn’t just be blackballed from the dozen or so regional newspapers that we publish, but also the larger national conglomerate that runs about 40. We take pride in good sources. Undermine that, and you’re not working for us.

The point I’m making isn’t really about the ability to fake specific angles or the tech side of it. It’s about levels of trust and independent sources.

It’s certainly possible for people to put up some fake accounts and tweet some fake images of seperate angles. But I’m not trusting random accounts on Twitter for that. We look at sources like AP, Reuters, AFP… if they all have the same news images from different angles, it’s trustworthy enough for me. On a smaller scale, we look at people and sources we trust and have vetted personally. People with longstanding relationships. It really does boil down to a ‘circle of trust’: if I don’t know a particular photographer, I’ll talk to someone who can vouch for them based on past experiences.

And if all else fails and it’s just too juicy not to run? We’d slap a big 'ole ‘this image has not been verified’ on it. Which we’ve never had to do so far, because we’re careful with our sources.

I can’t control where people find their information, that’s a fact. If people choose to find their news on unreliable, fake, agenda-driven, bot-infested social media, there’s very little I can do to stop that.

All I can do is be the best possible source for people who choose to find their news with us.

The ‘death of newspapers’ has been a theme throughout the decades. Radio is faster, it’s going to kill papers. TV is faster, it’s going to kill papers. The internet is faster, it’s going to kill newspapers… and yet, there’s still newspapers. And we’re evolving too. We’re not just a printed product, we also ARE an internet news source. The printed medium isn’t as fast, sure, but that’s also something that our actual readers like. The ability to sit down and read a properly sourced, well written story at a time and place of their choosing. A lot of them still prefer to read their paper saturday morning over a nice breakfast. Like any business, we adapt to the changing needs of consumers. Printed papers might not be as big as they once were, but they won’t be dying out any time soon.

Well again, multiple, independent sources that each have a level of trust go pretty far.

From my personal experience with AI though… I found it difficult to get it to generate consistent images. So if I’d ask it for different angles of the same thing, details on it would change. Can it be done? Sure. With good systems and a bit of photoshopping you could likely fake multiple angles of it.

But for the images we run? It wouldn’t really be worth the effort I imagine. We’re not talking iconic shots like the ones mentioned in the article.

I work at a newspaper as both a writer and photographer. I deal with images all day.

Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

So, as a professional, am I worried? Not really. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to ‘trust and verify when possible’. We generally receive our images from people who are wholly reliable. They have no reason to deceive us and know that burning that bridge will hurt their organisation and career. It’s not worth it.

If someone was to send us an image that’s ‘too interesting’, we’d obviously try to verify it through other sources. If a bunch of people photographed that same incident from different angles, clearly it’s real. If we can’t verify it, well, we either trust the source and run it, or we don’t.

It gets even wilder when you tell younger people that PC’s didn’t even come with storage drives in the early days. One of the earliest I used had to have software loaded through cassette tape. That was certainly a bit annoying, as it took quite a while and was error prone.

These days I somewhat collect old hardware. I love things like my Macintosh Plus where you need to juggle disks in order to load software in the memory so you can use it. Nowadays a single text e-mail outweighs the entire OS for a system like that.

Our first family PC had a 1,3 gigabyte drive. That had Win ‘95 on it, productivity apps, bunch of games, etc. This was a time when you could actually still run games off CD-ROM’s without needing installs.

These days, my phone has over 200 times the memory. It’s still amazing to me.

Same thing with SD cards. When I started with digital photography, a 32 MB card was big. My current camera takes images that are too large to fit on it! Early cameras even had floppy disk storage, if you can imagine…

I’ll look into those. That Sharp looks ancient though? I’m seeing videos on it from 6 years ago, assuming it’s the correct one.

Back in the ‘sweet spot’ of cellphone use, the late ‘90’s, you could get several days of use out of a battery. Some only needed a weekly charge. I also don’t need or want a flip phone to do everything that a smartphone does.

I’m a big proponent of making phones bigger with bigger batteries. I’ve got huge hands and most phones feel dainty and fragile. Give me a house brick with a week long battery and I’d be perfectly happy. Making phones slimmer is just silly.

God yes.

I was looking at phones yesterday and thinking: do they make an actual, premium flip phone with keyboard a la the old Motorola Razr? It appears nobody does. All I could find were cheap shitty Chinese plasticky trash or phones made for the elderly.

I want something with a nice metal/titanium case, premium keyboard, decent oled screen, 10+ megapixel camera on it… and something that I can snap shut like it owes me money. Don’t make it too small; I want a week’s battery life at least and swappable battery.

And I would - and I’m not joking here - pay 600-800 euros for that, depending on how premium the experience is.

I think there’s absolutely a market for that.

The roommate and friend sound awesome. I’ve been the ‘emotional support normie’ for a few people on the spectrum over the years. Some do appreciate a bit of handholding in certain situations and I’m happy to oblige. And all love having someone to talk to about specific interests, who won’t slow them down or cut them off.

I also LOVE what I like to call ‘random autistic encounters’.

I like movies for example. I see about three per week at my local theatre, always the early, nearly empty showtimes. Movies are a solo activity for me; something I get to enjoy without it sapping my energy.

Turns out, the almost empty showings also tend to attract autistic people as they’re not as taxing. So the past year, I’ve sat next to a few regulars who’ve struck up post-movie conversations with me after they’d seen me a few times. I’m apparently a very welcoming person to talk to.

They know we share at least movies as an interest, so they’ll walk up and start a conversation about that. But after about 10 minutes, we’re talking about stuff ranging from video games to anime, ancient Roman history, board games, obscure 1990’s German railway trivia or whatever else they or I might be into. And after half an hour of chatting with this complete stranger, they’ll casually mention ‘I’m autistic…’

Usually my reply is ‘well duh, that’s obvious’. I’ll explain that I work with autistic people and that I can pretty much spot one on sight by now :D

It’s always fascinating how people think autistic people are quiet or don’t like talking. They’ll happily talk your ear off for an hour straight if you actually engage with them. I’ve met some wildly interesting folks that way.

As to work: we have a very structured workplace with a very set routine, fixed deadlines, that sort of thing. The people we’ve had really thrive in our line of work. As long as the work gets done on time, they get a LOT of freedom in how they do it. We’re very much hands-off management.

We actually actively hire people on the spectrum for our department through a job placement program. We’re such a good fit for them, they really flourish at our company and leave with more confidence. We’re willing to work with their specific challenges, as they’re overall awesome employees.

That’s gotta suck. At least in my job, our company owner has a daughter with severe autism so he’s very understanding of the specific needs of people who work there and are on the spectrum. We do probably accommodate a bit too much in some things, but if it keeps people happy and productive, I don’t see that as a bad thing.