Not sure on the policy for this (and too lazy to read through the TOS) but the usual standard is:
You have read only access to your data in some form for N months. Sometimes individual, sometimes grabbing the whole dump. If you haven’t renewed your license within N months, that data is deleted (but not really).
MS Office is increasingly only sold as part of “Microsoft 365” which already involves paying for cloud storage and copilot and the like.
20 seconds of googling gets me the pricing page for their family (which I think is the same as single seat personal?) plan which is 130 USD a year for
For one to six people
Sign in to five devices at once
Use on PCs, Macs, phones, and tablets
Up to 6 TB of secure cloud storage (1 TB per person)
Productivity apps with Microsoft CopilotFootnote1
Identity,Footnote2 data, and device security
Ad-free secure email
There may still be some corner case “just MS office” releases that are targeted towards legacy machines in certain regions. But if you try to buy MS Office for whatever reason, that is what you are gonna get.
With my user/increasingly crazy man in the woods hat? Fuck that noise.
With my corporate stooge hat (that is the one that pays for the previous hats)? This actually is a really good idea. Way too often we have people saving documents to their laptops or losing them when they break a desktop enough that IT has to reimage it. Everything corporate should live in the corporate data store by default.
And… at this point, any individual user using MS Office is an idiot who probably also needs that extra layer of protection. Why spend money when Google Drive (which is already cloud native) works just as well? And for those who care about offline use? Get Libre Office where stuff is perpetually 80% as good.
And when GN responded to all the sniping over the months… LMG came out ahead. Rossman is a manipulative libertarian prick, but he really nailed it with Linus exhibiting all the signs of being a gaslighting abuser. And… it works.
Because the general consensus, outside of their subreddits (although even in GN’s…) was that Steve was in the wrong for responding to all the “some people are out to get us” style sniping and should just let the “drama” drop. And then LMG immediately pivoted to “Dude, just let it go. We improved our practices and are better for it. Maybe you should too. Oh, and if anyone mentions Madison’s name we’ll sue the fuck out of them”. And it worked.
If only because LMG is an order of magnitude larger (17M versus 2.5M subscribers) and most people likely never even heard GN’s arguments on why not lying about your testing to support corporate sponsors/interests is bad. They instead just see some guy “whining” (and probably get fed a lot of sock puppets from the companies GN has burned bridges with…) and move on.
LMG is nowhere near as untouchable as they used to be. But they are still probably the single biggest influencer in the PC/“tech” space. And… just look at this thread for the people who, with a straight face, are talking about how Framework will be their saviour from some nebulous threat.
Define “millionaire with his own PR company and a history of using them for his own personal needs is a significant investor” whichever way makes you happy.
Mobile GPUs have already been a thing. They are generally soldered for structural purposes but that isn’t a requirement of the tech and some of the htpc form factor devices that used mobile GPUs have had them as swappable. Also, the old framework 16 already had non-soldered GPUs?
It is just that this isn’t an avenue that most system integrators care about. Because there is already a MUCH better solution in the form of external GPUs which… still sort of exist. The idea that you focus on power efficiency and convenience for the laptop and plug it into a dock/big ass box when you want more GPU power. And even THAT is mostly a novelty since onboard GPUs/APU systems/whatever are actually REALLY good these days and more than capable of driving what people generally want/need on a laptop display.
But either way: This is “an industry first” in the same sense that it was an “industry first” when I figured out where the fricking map of my motherboard was while building it. A very big accomplishment to solve a problem that bothers a lot of people (fuck the shorthand maps. Gimme the real one) but also only a “first” if you narrow things down massively. You know… like with PR.
a company that is so far the best chance we’ve had since IBM came up with the ThinkPad.
Because honestly? Framework is cool as hell. But most of what they are “innovating” are not soldering things and making people not realize they are still just using a usb c port and a shit ton of dongles. The former tending to have very little utility for end users but be INCREDIBLY useful for assembly line workers.
And, generally speaking, the people who are swapping out their GPUs every other year… aren’t the kind of people who will care if they buy a new laptop or reuse their old one except for all the parts they wanted to replace or upgrade. Let alone heat concerns (which is why I would LOVE a benchmark of the different paths towards the same SKU in a framework).
Framework is partially owned by Linus Media Group.
They got their PR game on lock.
Yeah.
If you are going to insist on giving yourself and everyone around you cancer AND making your house smell like rat shit (not a euphemism…), this seems like a really good invention. Basically ALL the “spontaneously combusted” folk are believed to be people who dropped a lit cigarette while sleeping and it is still a somewhat common cause of house fires.
But yeah. Hookahs and the like already existed.
So… “the ignorance of the masses” should be combatted by willful ignorance and nonsense that falls apart the moment anyone looks at it?
Get angry. I sure am. Look for alternatives. Graphene sure ain’t it but I hope it will be in the next four or five years. But this is something google are willing to futz with for a reason: The vast majority of users don’t care about it and even with the changes it isn’t significantly worse than the competition.
Yet everywhere I see “Well, I guess I have to buy Apple now” which is just… buy it if you want to but don’t pretend this shit is why.
I mean, there is still UI/UX, app store policies, and general cost/options.
This definitely makes Android a lot less appealing. But it is also questionable to act like the biggest reason to use android was sideloading apps since the vast majority of users don’t even know that is an option (and probably shouldn’t since they have no understanding of how to vet them). Especially since Apple isn’t any better (?).
We are a numbers species
And we only have power when we act in numbers towards a focused goal.
This is why we (should) have (more) Unions instead of just “Negotiate for yourself and everyone will benefit”. And that, inherently, needs leaders who know how to work towards a shared purpose.
Everyone should work towards making the world a better place. But we also need to understand what we are actually working towards and what those “somethings” actually can accomplish.
The issue is what this even accomplishes.
Traction is indeed important. But people also get exhausted (how many folk were whinging about “first I needed to make my avatar a rainbow and now it needs to be black? Oh, you mean a black box. Whoopsie” back in 2020?). It is why “just do something, it doesn’t matter what” is such a stupid fucking mentality because you waste the general good will towards pointless slacktivism and then people stop caring by the time you have an idea of how to utilize them.
Which… is where the Rossman comes in. I have a lot of issues with him as a human being but as an activist he is REALLY effective… for Right to Repair… for repair shops. But he has also made his career on convincing everyday people that he is fighting for them when he is really using them as ammunition for making sure his repair shop (that totally doesn’t violate any labor laws…) can stay running because OBVIOUSLY this lobbyist movement to support activity that requires a full hotplate and high powered microscope is something that everyday consumers care about (sort of in the sense of having options, but at this scale the poison pill apple compliance is actually probably just as good, if not better, for consumers)
I haven’t been able to even find a good explanation of what this is even supposed to accomplish. But, dime to a dollar, it is Rossman et al demonstrating how quickly he can mobilize The Internet as a negotiating tactic for whatever he and his lobbyist buddies are pushing on right now.
PM->DM was a mix of making it more obvious that those were NOT private in the slightest and to better align with marketing (“send a Direct Message to the celebrity you are stalking!”)
I am not sure when “pfp” took over but I’ve noticed over the past 3 or 4 months a LOT of random requests for a DM on discord of people asking where I got my pfp… which is literally a screenshot from a cartoon in the 00s. So I assume this is related to selling avatars to people on the game social networks?
Because, again, it is about managing risk.
Pickpockets and muggers are a thing. Depending on how worried you are, you might consider only carrying just enough cash for the day but… good luck functioning on holiday in a foreign land without your phone. So you take precautions. You avoid the giant masses of tourists but you also avoid the super dark alleys. And you always keep a hand on your valuables.
Same thing here. There are plenty of activities where just having a layer of VPN is a great protection (all those linux ISOs, for example…). But I am also aware that were I to do anything where being identified is a serious risk to my safety? I am using alternative methods. And so forth.
So when someone says
NEVER trust a VPN.
And you reply
The only exception to this is IMO ones that (I like)
You are actively giving bad advice and leading to the kind of shit this thread is about. People who didn’t do basic research who thought they were safe and… hopefully are just at a bit higher risk of getting a letter in the mail from the MPAA.
Homie. Your response to “don’t trust companies. Take precautions” is “Well ackshually trust this one” and, upon being reminded that other companies used to have good marketing and even practices, was to double down.
Word it however you want. Either way: Don’t stan for corporations and protect yourself.
Again, how many companies say one thing one quarter and another the next? Let alone a decade later.
I am not saying to go uninstall your PIA stuff right now. I am saying to act with the understanding of what your risks are if they are compromised and how important you would be in the event that they are.
Because companies are not our friends. We may have aligned interests but you have to always operate under the understanding of what capitalism IS and what their interests actually are. And while it is fun to aggressively define yourself by what you consume? To play on a fairly misogynistic “joke”: PIA isn’t gonna fuck you no matter how hard you stan for it.
You mean the court case from almost ten years ago?
Yeah, that sounds safe. I mean, Google is still all about Do No Evil, right?
And this is why I am so obnoxious any time someone says “I found this plugin to block fandom wikis” or “I have this plugin to fix youtube embeds”.
Code is only as safe as the people you trust to review it. And no, being open source doesn’t matter in that regard. Yes, it theoretically increases the number of eyes on but how many of those eyes who ACTUALLY look at the code are doing it with every release AND understand how to spot a vulnerability or a… whatever this is.
Same with VPNs. NEVER trust a VPN. And sure as fuck never use a free one for anything remotely sensitive. Understand what your risk of exposure is and that, at the best of times, you are trusting a company to be telling the truth that they aren’t keeping a log of every single thing you nutted to.
And before someone says “That is why I do everything over tor!”: Maybe also understand the concept of digital fingerprints and WHY it is that Google is able to know someone is pregnant even before they are late.
Understand the risks and consequences of every action you take and act accordingly. And understand that there really is no one size fits all solution.
Yes… for an individual, those are the prices (if only there was some 3 hour youtube video about adding more memory to cards…).
The issue is that even a downstream isn’t buying 100 dollars of VRAM. They need to buy that in bulk. And then they need to retool their factories to support that configuration. And if they can’t sell enough of those units to justify the retooling and the purchases?
I mean… look at EVGA
And then you have the marketing/brand implications which I already spoke to.
That… really isn’t how things work at all.
But also? That extra VRAM costs money (especially if you want it to be high performance). And you more or less need to produce things in bulk for it to be viable. So if AMD makes a bunch of “AI Accelerators” and nobody buys them because they would rather nVidia (which the video talked about)? it is just a massive flop AND it means that AMD is no longer “the best bang for your buck” option and is directly competing with nVidia in the mindspace of consumers.
That said? I could actually see them cannibalize what little market share Intel got. The Intel GPUs are… moving on. But they have support for codecs that video editors and transcoders REALLY benefit from and a not insignificant part of the Influencer and Editor space actually have those in their editing or capture PCs. Tweaking the silicon to better support those use cases and selling higher memory versions of the Radeons would potentially be a “productivity” space taht can justify the added cost and have knock ons from people who just want to have even more chrome tabs open while they play fortnite. And… it might lead to the more CS side of the ML world actually realizing it isn’t that hard to run pytorch with an AMD card.
If data has handling requirements it 500% should not be something people are storing on their “personal” devices.
I personally hate the idea of storing corporate data in “cloud” storage, but MS et al have gotten approval from many governments to do exactly that. So if that is your corporate data store? Then that is where it goes. And if someone is making a new document with additional restrictions then they better damned well have training on how to pick which folder in onedrive it goes into.