Musty

I'm wondering if anyone else here has been using the Pixel Watch 2 and has had issues with GPS activity tracking? The watch will frequently lose GPS position in an activity without warning and won't find it again. Usually, if it is going to happen, it is after about 5-10 minutes of a run. I've had 5k-8km runs where basically just the first 1km was recorded at all. I've had a community thread open on the Fitbit forums since ‎10-14-2023 discussing the issue and I'm definitely not the only one. What is disappointing me is the lack of support or fix for what is a long term issue that breaks some of the basic core functionality of the watch. The only support I've had is to advise changing permission settings and to "try turning it off and on again". I'm pretty much giving in and looking at whether I can return the watch at this point.

Just finished this and it is the balanced view that was needed and basically reflects my opinions. I vaguely mentioned my concerns with GNs video narrative in an earlier post and this quite neatly dissects it, particularly in terms of the claims of objectivity mixed in with a (conscious or unconscious) subjective opinion that runs through the whole video that leads the audience. The claims of objectivity feel almost self-righteous in that context. Also covers my opinion on errors nicely (owning up to his own). It also doesn't let LMG off the hook for the things I considered to be the most concerning to come out in the last week. Good job Dr Cutress. The fact something that covers my opinions adequately takes an hour-and-a-half-long video essay basically shows how useless short-form discourse on this kind of thing can be . Why am I even posting this?

This might be too niche a question for the LTT forum but I'm confused. I just recruited Gau in FFVI, and he already has the rage ability for every monster that I've already encountered... Is this... Normal? Honestly it's years since I played this game but I swear I remember having to grind at first to build them up?! Is this a bug or am I just misremembering things? Edit: Ignore me, I don't have all of them. Just the starting ones that I completely forgot existed

Same really. I think how they see each other is probably the difference. It sounds like Linus still sees their relationship as colleagues in tech media, and what I said about working together would apply to how you'd like people in the same space to treat each other. From that perspective I can understand being hurt by the way Steve handled things (particularly since they are/were also friends). From what GN has said in the past, they are treating LMG as a manufacturer / corp now rather than a tech media colleague. I said correctly before but when I think about I'm less sure. LMG is a tech media company at heart. Yes they have grown and sell and make merch now, but I'd challenge you to name a creator that doesn't (granted, maybe not at the same scale). Should (the awesome) Simone Giertz be treated as a manufacturer rather than a maker by others in the space now? Because she has started selling some of the products featured in videos? Where do you draw the arbitrary line?

Just for some perspective on the mistakes in videos. I'm a researcher by trade and even with multiple expert authors and "peer-review" (which isn't a great system), and expert editors at journals checking over things, mistakes happen. Usually they are caught in the process of writing a paper. Occasionally they are published. We are talking about manuscripts that can be years in the making. The problem of mistakes in data/analyses is not "solved" because people, sometimes multiple people, make mistakes. That's why, personally, I don't find the mistakes in videos problematic. I also don't have an issue with the way LMG is trying to correct those mistakes with comments. Better a mistake corrected than ignored. GNs desire to only have "good datapoints" out there is laudable but it's never going to be perfect. I never take someone else's data at face value, everything should be treated with some healthy skepticism which is why having multiple testers in the same space is so useful to begin with. On the fallout of GNs video, I'd say this. I personally know of multiple cases of researchers reaching out to each other to resolve mistakes collaboratively and correct the record. I've also seen people put on blast publically for making mistakes. One helps move the field forward. The other isn't wrong but I also don't think it is particularly helpful for anything but feeling vindicated, unless it is needed as a last resort when mistakes have been willfully ignored, which I don't think is the case here. It just creates a counterproductive atmosphere. To say GNs motives are suspect, and start spinning conspiracy theories, is a bit daft though. Steve is as straight a shooter as you'll see. I have watched GN and LTT for quite a while now (and will continue to watch both) and have to be honest, I'm not surprised by this situation at all. LMG are moving more into a testing and review sector that Steve has particularly strong opinions on (which he is usually rather forthright with). It was bound to lead to some clashes sooner or later. That plus the expansion of LMG has meant GN is treating them (correctly) as a corporation at the same time the expansion of LMG is probably causing some growing pains. Lovely recipe for issues to arise, no need for any complicated theories on jealousy. Personally, I often find GNs approach and outlook is very black and white, possibly part of trying to do things objectively. This is objectively good, worthy of praise, the correct way to do things. This is objectivy bad, wrong, and should be criticised in strongest terms. It makes for excellent reviews. But for this kind of drama piece, I struggle with it more. Not just meaning for the LMG story here, but previous call outs of other companies. I often find myself agreeing with some of the general points, but they get lost in a tone of rightous indignation that just doesn't usually chime with me and I find hard to deal with. I can't bring myself to have such strong feelings on things that, in the grand scheme of things, are probably just mistakes or things that don't matter that much. The only part of his story I was really concerned with was the BilletLabs situation, but again I'd say it's very much a case of, mistakes happen and as long as it is dealt with and lessons are learned then that is the best you can really ask.

It's just good practice to get good sides of the picture isn't it? He isn't obligated to do it but, integrity wise, it's important. There is a reason most articles end with a statement about reaching out to the subject of an article for comment (if their comments aren't included in the article already). To show they have done their due diligence to get the full story.

Thanks for the fast and well thought out post @LinusTech. My only real concern from GNs video was the issue with the BilletLabs prototype. I think most people would say the same. I did worry that your side of the story was missing there and I'm glad it has been resolved. I didn't agree with the testing decision made on the original video, but for the sake of perspective, on the grand scale of reactions it was a case of "oh, that's a pity" rather than "Beasts! Monsters! How could you!". Still enjoyed the video. With the corrections in videos recently. I don't really mind. A mistake caught after publishing is still a mistake caught and all the better if it is flagged and you've already said you are trying to get better at catching them sooner. I hope you don't take the responses to this too hard. Fast reactions to drama brings out the worst in people, myself included. I wrote a post about the BilletLabs stuff, edited it to death because I realised it sounded harsher than my actual opinion, concluded it still added nothing to the conversation given there was a bit of a pile-on happening and in context the more jokey tone I'd gone for was probably just adding to it, and eventually reported it to ask for it to be deleted because I was disappointed in my own reaction. And all this before I'd read your post .

I was thinking this, Bing uses DALE, which doesn't have any restrictions on use, so I could restart the project and do everything with DALE or stable diffusion, but I'm already pretty happy with the end result and starting again would be a pain. I could also pass my end result as a prompt through stable diffusion to generate a new version... My worry was that I'm not personally making a profit from it since I'm doing it for free, but they would use the image to advertise an event that people pay for. I think what I have done is probably fine but don't want to cause them issues down the line.

I was recently playing with BingAI and noticed the terms of use had changed since last time (I appreciate this is probably old news by now). The bit I was specifically interested in was that they have changed their terms from allowing you to use generated images for any "legal use", to limit things to personal, non-commercial use only. Not sure how enforceable that is given they are a US company and it seems that straight-up output from an AI like Bing is not considered copyrightable under the current US copyright guidelines? Wondering if anyone has any knowledge of this. What I had originally been doing, was taking multiple different images with some extensive editing and combining them in a single piece to use in some kind of marketing for a not-for-profit. I guess that would that now be prohibited? (Not-for-profit doesn't mean the use is non-commercial if it is to advertise something where money is involved which I hadn't realised). I appreciate there are also ethical implications for using AI art that I wasn't looking to get into here. I'm just helping out, their budget is zero for this kind of stuff. For a previous project I've used old out-of-copyright material as a starting point but thought I'd give this a try. May have been an error!

Found in the "tech waste" bin at work today, which occasionally throws up some interesting stuff. They called it a pocket PC so I'm counting it. Believe this is a 2003 model iPAQ.

Oh, bugger. Started watching last night but had to go to sleep, was going to catch up this morning. Wish I still had that floatplane membership xD (couldn't justify the money at the time on top of having YT premium).

Even if a product with the same name came up, its a pretty generic descriptive name. I'm surprised it is something they were allowed to trademark.

Just woke up ready for my usual Saturday morning dose of tech news, and while TechLinked provided, I don't see the WAN show. There was a tweet showing the setup for the stream so I guess it was meant to run. Does anyone know what happened? I saw people on twitter mention that the YouTube stream died after 8 mins but did the stream continue on floatplane and twitch?

You going to go and inspect the factory once you find out?

Just clicked on this thread and this message was a delightful surprise to arrive to based on the topic title .

Just saw the responses to this as offline yesterday, thanks for the advice folks! I'm very much on board with the "make it inconvenient and noisy for them" approach to make it a less appealing target. I live in a super quiet cul-de-sac with some lovely nosy neighbours who aren't away from home often (an advantage for things like this!) and I've already had a word with them. The rear and front doors are already double-deadbolt. I'm going to add some cameras and lighting front and back. I will go for motion detectors though, don't want it to annoy the neighbours too much. Will add some extra bolt locks to the outside of the garage as well, but I know they only go so far. This is an excellent idea though! When I was a kid our family garage had three bolts on the outside alongside its normal lock. It was still broken into 3 or 4 times. They just cut the locks. Part of the reason I'll never buy an expensive bike and just ride cheap old steel frame ones. The only new one I got for my birthday once was stolen within two weeks. I'm in the UK so no NRA, but this reminds me so much of my sisters incident a while back . Some kids had been fighting nearby and someone decided to take their rage out on her car with a golf club. Ended up writing it off. One of her neighbours is a local hard case. Told her to park in front of his house from now on and pass him a description of the person that did it if she had one... never any issues after that .

I have come home tonight to see what looks suspiciously like an X or some kind of mark painted on my faded black garage in a much fresher black paint. I've not seen it in daylight yet so I cant really tell if I'm just being paranoid, but it stood out to me immediately under my car headlights. I suspect someone marked up as a target to rob. I stupidly left some tools on display in the house from DIY I was doing earlier. Not sure if that encouraged them. They are all cheap and second hand anyway mind (if my prospective burgler is reading this....) Now the question is, how do I improve the security of the garage enough to make it too awkward to be worth their time? Ideally relatively inexpensively since I'm not exactly well off at the moment. I know whatever I do there would be a way in... Nothing too Kevin McAllister please. The front door is a classic steel up and over opening door with a single lock that probably wouldn't cause the lock picking lawyer to break a sweat, but I'd imagine they'd just try to force the door anyway. The front is very visible from the street. The back garage door is a 5 point (I think, possibly more) locking composite door in a upvc frame. Out back isn't overlooked at all and you can climb a relatively small wall to get there. If I was a thief that's probably where I'd go. Any advice appreciated!

Managed to completely smash my Nord 2 screen to the point it is non-functional. Happy to try to replace it myself but there are no guides available yet and parts seem hard to get a hold of / exepensive. I spotted some potential replacements on aliexpress but... not sure if i trust that as a source of parts. Any thoughts on how I could replace this in the UK?

very true. An easy to remove back panel and a 5 minute fix is infinitely preferable. Although it does make me wonder how our IT department had it for two weeks without figuring it out .

Yeah it is a bog standard one. It is from a Dell XPS 15 2 in 1. I didn't actually check the exact model but it should be 3 or 4 years old by now and I don't think pcie4 support came to laptops until Tiger Lake was released last year? When I told my boss what the issue was, he said that he had been wondering what that grey / yellow stuff was that kept escaping out of his ports in when he removed cables . I guess the original pad was just falling apart. Not ideal for what should be a high end laptop.

There is the normal screw and standoff securing the SSD down. But there seems to be some flex in the middle of the SSD. I'm not sure exactly what is causing the issue, because it should be fairly secure. Maybe the chassis itself is a little warped. Anyway my best guess is that the fact thermal pad is squished between the chassis and the SSD helps to stop the SSD it flexing too much (just based on force / friction rather than adhesive. It isn't particularly sticky). The thermal pad on this looks worn and a little crushed, so might not be preventing the flex as well without some additional support.

It was an accident, I promise. I tried to pay on a mobile app, but because I was late for a meeting and rushing I didn't check the payment had processed properly . Opened my phone after the meeting to a lovely error message.

No finned heatsink, it was just directly contacting the aluminium chassis. I would normally run some tests like this, but the laptop is totally locked down by our IT services. I don't have admin on it unfortunately. I would have normally booted to ubuntu from a memory stick to run some tests but my boss only has USBC ports and I don't have a USBC to USBA adaptor handy .

Thanks! I'll order some and swap one in when they arrive. The temporary fix will at least give him a working machine in the short term.

Yeah overheating was my main concern if it was a thermal pad. It was a relatively thick pad at some point in its life. Pale green with a sticky back and a spongy material I'll have a quick look online when i get a chance. Everything I've seen seems to be relatively thin which wouldn't help with the flex issue.