For ones out of China, Alldocube and Blackview offer good value for money and they’re mid-tier brands with regards to reputability.

The Alldocube iPlay50 or the Blackview Tab 10/Tab 11/Tab 18 and similar are decent and worth considering.

I’m still of the opinion that Microsoft could have carved out a share of the mobile phone market by targeting enterprise and by brute-forcing it by throwing a bunch of cash at a few of the really good mobile app developers to create the basic apps that make or break a mobile phone: a podcast app, an ereader, a music player, a video player.

If you want to go wild with it, they could have used their position and created really good integration with Office apps, particularly PowerPoint, so that the mobile app could run a range of functions that turned your phone into a smart control that would run a timer, give time alerts, control the slides, give you video controls, use your phone’s data to stream embedded content, record audio of your presentation etc.

If you had a Windows phone that was capable of the basic functions that are essential for a smartphone and they had the right security options then businesses would probably have gone in on Windows phones. If the phones were portable desktop PCs, even more so. Throw a feature-rich PowerPoint control app in the mix and Microsoft would have cornered the business side of the smartphone market and from there they would have been able to expand their market share, especially with the perk of having a portable desktop via your phone.

I’m not crying over Microsoft missing opportunities though, just pointing out that when you have fuck-you money that you can just throw at a problem and you fumble the bag on the mobile phone market when you’re a tech company then your entire business is a house of cards built upon an effective monopoly.

Y’all ever do some investigative reporting into a US general and then start doing the same for the CIA director when suddenly your car plows into a tree at 100mph and your engine launches out of the bay and flies 100 feet away from the crash site?

Hey @410757864530_dead_follicles@hexbear.net

Have you heard about this collective before? I feel like your DIY electrolysis project fits really neatly into what this crew are doing. Maybe it might be worth reaching out to them at some point to see if they would consider collaborating.

Have you turned off secure boot?

Idk if it’s fixed yet but it probably isn’t. Best to play it safe.

Lol what does it say about me that I’ve never considered that it might be possible to get a legit ISO from Microsoft before and my mind immediately jumps to piracy?

Thanks for the info, that’s legit very useful to know.

Have you set up a recovery drive? If not, now’s the time to make it a priority.

I’d also extract the Windows product key and keep it somewhere safe, maybe put it in an email to yourself? That way if shit goes haywire you will be able to do a fresh install from a pirated windows image but you’ll still be able to use the same product key.

And guess what I was just about to spin up smh

Glad to help 🫡

There isn’t much effort for archiving and distributing Australian TV via piracy unfortunately. That shithole country is a colony of leechers and not seeders from what I can tell.

It’s fortunate that this show got international distribution via Fox apparently and it seems to have been officially dubbed into Russian for distribution there which has made it infinitely easier to track down than if it was only broadcast to Oceania.

Got it!

Dunno how sketchy that website is so use your discretion and make sure that you’ve got a good adblocker active etc. You’ll have to go into the settings and change the audio language to English. Also at the top, remember to change it so you start at episode 1 because it looks like it plays episode 10 first by default:

Idk what downloader will rip this but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Looks like the video quality goes up to 1080p so you’re pretty lucky on that front.

Oh shit, I didn’t check to see if it was dubbed sorry lol. Lemme try again.

This is just the before and after footage used as promo material but is this what you’re looking for?

I think this is it

I don’t know any sign languages but I’m interested in linguistics and I can assure you that sign languages aren’t “speaking in your dialect except with your hands”.

Sign languages are independent languages and the grammar is not the same as its spoken counterpart. It’s not a 1:1 for the same local language and anyone who speaks a second language knows that you can’t just transpose your native language into another directly.

Not knowing a thing about this app, I can almost certainly guess that the techbros who designed this have no familiarity with linguistics and so they’ve taken a selection of the most commonly used words in English and copied them into ASL signs, thus the syntax is all janky and borderline incomprehensible.

For a rough approximation of what I’m talking about with janky syntax like this, here’s a 1:1 Japanese to English direct transposition:

“ASL is doesn’t speak however language immense is. Bothersome.”

You can probably get a sense of what I’m saying but you’re not going to understand what I’m actually saying (I guess unless you can figure out the Japanese words I’m referring to). A direct translation is going to give you impressions but it’s really insufficient for clarity of communication and it’s not a tool for conversation.

The only situation that I can imagine this being of some use would be where you are trying to communicate with a deaf person and one of the two of you has low/no literacy.

Bill need not worry about the revolution reappropriating his hoard of wealth, he will adapt

Let’s see Paul Allen’s legacy

But on a serious note, this sucks to hear. It’s a real shame that he didn’t create some sort of charitable trust to ensure that this museum continued operating into the future. Feels like a big loss to the world that it’s being sold off like this.

Desktops are always going to be better bang for buck.

They are far easier to repair or replace parts with if something craps out, and you’ll get more value for money and future-proofing with a PC. If you have the desk space, I’d recommend opting for a desktop gaming PC hands down.

With that and a stable network connection you’ll be able to stream to a laptop that is lower specced. Or you can stream high-end games to a handheld unit like a Steam Deck.

Unless you’re moving house a lot or you don’t have permanent desk space, imo the best option is to invest in a desktop PC and then get a lightweight laptop, maybe a Chromebook or similar that offers you basic functionality with good battery life (maybe running Linux if you are so inclined) either one that has specs to handle Steam Link, if you want the flexibility that gaming using a laptop offers, or whatever covers your basic portable computing needs. Then get a Steam Deck or ROG Ally or similar if you really want go all-in on portable gaming (especially if you wait a while for the Steam Deck 2 release which should cause the price of the original to drop.)

Overall that would be a lot of money to drop on IT gear but you don’t have to do it all at once and for the price of a good gaming laptop you could get a decent gaming PC and a cheaper laptop that will be better all-round.

Keep an eye on Ozbargain because refurbished laptops come up pretty frequently.

outright CP by Labor Day

Last year’s news, well ahead of schedule.

Ye. That was me.

Noticed it a while ago but wasn’t sure whether or not I should have mentioned it because it only serves to add to the spectre of Hexbear but it was too funny not to mention it and my ADHD impulsiveness got the better of me so here we are lol.

I often get hits for Hexbear on the first or second page of results. It was quite jarring the first time it happened to me when I was trawling for pirated materials and I was like “Huh, that’s Hexbear…
Wait, wtf is Hexbear doing on Yandex!?”